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JlWW^ of MAR<2ffM0NT»8 IIBaACT,’^ 

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Printed from the advanced Prdof-sheets, purchwed 
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Gseat -£xpcetatioM, > 
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Old Carlo4StyBhop,*> 
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'liPre's Labor "W.c*, - T OS 

•d’ Beserted Wife, - -100 

^ The Gipsy’s Prophecy, 1 OO 
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Wyoftielslc, . - 
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The Three Beauties,, 1 00 
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India. 'Pearl River, :2 00 


;^^^bowe are each to one large octavo volunre, paper e«w«r. 


h price# varying from flAOO to 5IOt.OOa set, according to tlw 
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Mysteries of the.Co«Tt 
ofJUw s dap, BtoIs.,- 
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“ ' ■ The Soldiei’a Wife, - 

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Qnecn Joanna, or the 
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£iiea Percy, « • 

Agnes Erelj-n, * • 

2*ick<^k Ahnm, - 
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Countess and the Pbge, 

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C}prinA,or Secrets of 
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2>iscar^hi Queen. 


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btna 


50 

50 

50 

55 


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"'Wallace-, Hero SctilXand, 56 
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» 

56 

5» 

56 


'56-i-' 

56 

56 

«• 

56 

56 


56 


56 

SS 


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CBABLBS lETBB’S WOBES. 


Ct— riw O-Mkll,,, , . 
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Arthur (yi.eary. 


56 


. St J Coo Cregan, ., - 

50 { IHrenport Dunn, ' - _ 

’ 56 1 Military ICditlou of the . 

56 j abort eight norels, 56 
-60 i Ten Thousaitti a Yearj— -irJrr 
.56 J * Tols., paper, - - 166 

Adoer cdl tie* ad the above are also published, each one 
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.The Conscript, f voXsh.I W 


Memoirs of a Phrrtelan,! 06 
Queen's Necklace, - 1 66 
Six Years Later, » T 00 
Countess of Chanty,- 1 .00 
Andree de 'TawracT, I’OO 
> GamlUe, - - ■ - 1 00 


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A edJtio* 6f each of the abort are'alsa'jmbUslied, ’ 
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•George, - 
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Ooperie'rt, - 
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56 

56 

50 

56 

50 


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Isabel ef Barmria, 
Mohicans of Paris. - 
Mon with Ffra Wlree, 
Twin Lieutenants, • 


56 

56 

56 

50- 


^eMl«^ Bride, - ‘1 g 


Wife’s YIrtojy,. 
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curse ef Oiftew, • 3 60 
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Courtship It Matrimoov 1 00 
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hook is also published in one rolumc, cloth, price Jfl.5A . 
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Bena ; or the Snow- 
Wrd, - - - J... 

htarcuB ITariand.vr • 
Love after Manfrige, 
'Eoline, •- ''T* y* 
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Planter's Dnuglfter,- 


,1 00 

X 00 
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3 06 

1 66 

3 06 

1 «o ■ 


X«' 

1 


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Life In the Old World i or TwaYoousio Swltaerland 
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mRS. AKE;6, STEPHENS' 'WOEES. 

' Mary Derwent, to. - 1 lOI The Old Homestead, 2 00 
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? XIEBIG’S WORKS ON CHEMISTRY. 

" Agricultural Chemistry, SS- 1 Ueblgh eelehrated Let- 
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.1 56 

1 25 

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A&y of tW^l>ot»>WorkR win be Mxxt by Rail, frte ’of Postage, to smy part of tbe .'P&itei 
^ ^ prieii bf oi«n»waat«»g. la aiettwr/to T* R Pbilada.:!-.-^ 


AURORA FLOYD. 


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A DOMESTIC STORY. 


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• 4 , - f-' ' 

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■ -n ■' . 


FROM “TEMPLE BAR.” 


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X- 

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■ fvux-x^^dlL (Ww 

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\ V 


BY MISS M. E. ABADDON. 


AUTHOR OF “JOHN MARCHMONT'S/ LEGACY,” “LADY LISLE,” 
“LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET,” ETC. 


“Aurora Floyd is destined to excite a sensation not inferior to that created hy ^East Lynne.* 
Miss Braddon, indeed, is much more cultivated than Mrs. Wood, and, therefore, her novel will he 
liked, by persons of refinement, even more than was *East Lynne,' The interest is absorbing. It 
is a sensation novel, in fact^ divested of all clap-trap. The reader pities and admires the heroine 
by turns; fur she is, with all her faults, a noble creature. John Mellisb, too, is a first-rate cha- 
racter, a thousand times greater than the proud lover who casts Aurora off, and whose selfishness 
is shamed by John’s trust and generosity. We commend this novel as altogether the best of the 
year.*' — Ladien’ National Magazine. 

“ Aurora Floyd has taken the town by storm." — London Illut. Neto$ of World. 

“ We predict for Miss Braddon’s powerful novel, Aurora Floyd, a great and highly merited sue- 
•ess." — Philad'a Press. 

' We regard it as one of the very best nouvellettes we have ever read. It is crammed full of 
inoident and interest, and is different from any thing we have ever seen.” — Germantown Telegraph. 


pi)tla5clpl)ia: 

T. B. PETERSON AND BROTHERS, 

306 CHESTNUT STREETi 




4 



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CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER I. 

How A Rich Banker Married an Actress ^ 23 

CHAPTER II. 

Aurora 30 

CHAPTER III. 

What became the Diamond Bracelet 34 

CHAPTER IV. 

After the Ball 40 

CHAPTER V. 

John Hellish 47 

CHAPTER VI. 

Rejected and Accepted 56 

CHAPTER VIT. 

Aurora’s Strange Pensioner 60 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Poor John Hellish comes back again 67 

CHAPTER IX. 

How Talbot Bulstrode Spent his Christmas 73 

CHAPTER X. 

Fighting the Battle 78 

CHAPTER XL 

At the Chateau D’Arques. 84 

CHAPTER XIL 

Steeve Hargraves, the “ Softy.” 88 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Spring Meeting 95 

CHAPTER XIV. 

“ Love took up the Glass of Time and turned it in his glowing Hands,” 103 

CHAPTER XV. . 

Mr. Pastern’s Letter ! tt 108 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Mr. James Conyers 113 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The Trainer’s Messenger 119 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Out in the Rain 125 


( 19 ) 


20 


TABLE OP CONTENTS.. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

M^oney Matters ^34 

CHAPTER XX. 

Captain Prodder 

CHAPTER XXI. 

“ He only said, I am a Weary,” 150 

CHAPTER XXII. 

Still Constant 155 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

On the Threshold of Darker Miseries 165 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Captain Prodder carries bad news to his Niece’s House 168 

CHAPTER XXV. 

The Deed that had been Done in the Wood 176 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

At the Golden Lion. 188 i 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

“My Wife! my Wife! what Wife! I have no Wife.” 19? 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Aurora’s Flight 195 

CHAPTER XXIX. . 

John Mellish FINDS HIS Home Desolate 200 , 

CHAPTER XXX. 

An Unexpected Visitor 206 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

Talbot Bulstrode’s Advice 214 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

On the Watch] 218 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

Captain Prodder goes back to Doncaster 224 

chapter' XXXIV. 

The Discovery of the Weapon with which James Conyers had been Slain.... . 232 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

Under a Cloud 237 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Reunion..... 245 

CHAPTER XXX VII. 

The Brass Button by Crosby, Birmingham 250 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

Off the Scent 254 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

Talbot Bulstrode hakes Atonement for the Past 261 


IN PRESS AND NEARLY READY. 


Price of each, 50 cents in paper cover, or 15 cents each in cloth. 


Vemer’s Pride. By Mrs. Henry Wood, author of ‘‘ The EarPs Heirs,” 
THe Castle’s Heir. By Mrs. Henry Wood, author of “The Earl’s Heirs.” 
The Foggy Night at Offord. By Mrs. Henry Wood. 

The Runaway Match. By Mrs. Henry Wood, author of “Earl’s Heirs.” 
John Marchmont’s Legacy. By author of “Aurora Floyd.” 

Lady Lisle. By Miss M. E. Braddon, author of “Aurora Fluyd.” 

The Trapper’s Daughter, and the eleven works following. By Gustave 
• Aimard, author of the “Prairie Flower,” “Indian Scout,” “Indian Chief,” 
“ Trapper’s Daughter,” etc, 


The Tiger Slayer. 

The Gold Seekers. 

The Indian Chief. 

The Border Rifles. 
Freebooters. 

The White Scalper. 

Above will each be in- octavo form. 


Trappers of the Arkansas. 
The Chief of the Aucas. 

The Red Track. 

The Last of the Incas. 
Queen of the Savannah. 

Price 50 cents in paper, or ^5 cents in cloth. 


TTEW J"TJST 

Aurora Floyd. A Domestic Story. By Miss M. E. BRADDON, author 
of “ John Marchmont’s Legacy,” “ Lady Audley’s Secret,” “Lady Lisle,” etc. 
Being one of the best and most powerful works ever printed. One volume, 
octavo. Price 15 cents in paper ; or One Dollar in cloth. 

Somebody’s Luggage. By CHARLES DICKENS, author of “ Pickwick 
Papers,” “ Oliver Twist,” etc., and fully equal to the best of the former works 
written by Charles Dickens, is published this day, complete in a fine octavo 
volume, on fine paper. Price Twenty-five cents a copy. 

Andree de Taverney. By Alexander Dumas. Being the final end of the 
“ Memoirs of a Physician” Series. 2 vols. paper, $1.00; or 1 vol., cloth, 1.25. 

Each of the following books are in octavo form. Price of each book is 50 cents 
in paper cover, or 15 cents in cloth. 

The Mystery. By Mrs. Henry Wood, author of “ The Earl’s Heirs.” 
Marrying for Money. By Mrs. Mackenzie Daniels. 

A Life’s Secret. By Mrs. Henry Wood, author of “The Earl’s Heirs.” 
The ChanningS. By Mrs. Henry Wood, author of “ The Earl’s Heirs.” 
The Earl’s Heirs. By Mrs. Henry Wood, author of “ The Channings.” 
The Trail Hunter. By Gustave Aimard, author of “Prairie Flower.” 
Pirates of the Prairies. By Gustave Aimard, author of “Prairie Flower.” 
The Flirt. By Mrs. Grey, author of the “Gambler’s Wife.” 

The Indian Scout. By Gustave Aimard, author of the “Trail Hunter.” 
The Prairie Flower. By Gustave Aimard, author of the “Indian Scout.” 
For Better, For Worse. From “Temple Bar.” A Charming Love Story . 
Dead Secret ; Hide and Seek ; After Dark. By Wilkie Collins. 
Above are each in octavo form. Price 50 cents in paper, or 75 cents in cloth. 
Love’s Labor Won. By Mrs. Southworth. One vol., cloth. Price $1.25. 
The Stolen Mask; Sister Rose; and the Yellow Mask. By 

Wilkie Collins. Price 25 cents each. 

Hickory Hall. By Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth. Price 50 cents. 
The Game of Euchre, and its Laws. One vol., cloth. Price 15 cents. 




4 


AURORA FLOYD. 


CHAPTER I. 

HOW A RICH BANKER MARRIED AN 
ACTRESS. 

Faint streaks of crimson glimmer here 
and there amidst the rich darkness of the 
Kentish woods. Autumn’s red finger has 
been lightly laid upon the foliage — spar- 
ingly, as the artist puts the brighter tints 
into his picture ; but the grandeur of an 
August sunset blazes upon the peaceful 
landscape, and lights all into glory. 

The encircling woods and wide lawn- 
like meadows, the still ponds of limpid 
water, the trim hedges, and the smooth 
winding roads ; undulating hill-tops, 
melting into the purple distance ; labor- 
ing men’s cottages, gleaming white from 
the surrounding foliage ; solitary road- 
side inns with brown thatched roofs and 
moss-grown stacks of lop-sided chim- 
neys ; noble mansions hiding behind an- 
cestral oaks ; tiny Gothic edifices ; Swiss 
and rustic lodges ; pillared gates sur- 
mounted by escutcheons hewn in stone, 
and festooned with green wreaths of 
clustering ivy ; village churches and prim 
schoolhouses ; every object in the fair 
English prospect is steeped in a fuminous 
haze, as the twilight shadows steal slowly 
upward from the dim recesses of shady 
woodland and winding lane, and every 
outline of the landscape darkens against 
the deepening crimson of the sky. 

Upon the broad fagade of a mighty 
red-brick mansion, built in the favorite 
style of the early Georgian era, the sink- 
ing sun lingers long, making gorgeous 
illumination. The long rows of narrow 
windows are all a-flame with the red 
light, and an honest homeward- tramping 


villager pauses once or twice in the road- 
way to glance across the smooth width 
of dewy lawn and tranquil lake, half fear- 
ful that there must be something more 
than natural in the glitter of those win- 
dows, and that maybe Maister Floyd’s 
house is a-fire. 

The stately red-built mansion belongs 
to Maister Floyd, as he is called in the 
honest of the Kentish rustics; to 
Archibald Martin Floyd, of the great 
banking-house of Floyd, Floyd, and 
Floyd, Lombard Street, City. 

The Kentish rustics know very little 
of this city banking-house ; for Archibald 
Martin, the senior partner, has long re- 
tired from any active share in the busi- 
ness, which is carried on entirely by his 
nephews Andrew and Alexander Floyd, 
both steady, middle-aged men, with fami- 
lies and country houses ; both owing their 
fortune to the rich uncle, who had found 
places in his counting-house for them 
some thirty years before, when they were 
tall, raw-boned, sandy-haired, red-com- 
plexioned Scottish youths, fresh from 
some unpronounceable village north of 
Aberdeen. 

The young gentlemen signed their 
names McFloyd when they first entered 
their uncle’s counting-house ; but they 
very soon followed that wise relative’s 
example, and dropped the formidable 
prefix. “We’ve nae need to tell these 
southeran bodies that we’re Scotche,” 
Alick remarked to his brother as he wrote 
his name for the first time A. Floyd, all 
short. 

The Scottish banking-house had thriv- 
en wonderfully in the hospitable English 
capital. Unprecedented success had wait- 
ed upon every enterprise undertaken by 
( 23 ) 


AUEORA FLOYD. 


24 

the old-established and respected firm of 
Floyd, Floyd, and Floyd. It had been 
Floyd, Floyd, and Floyd for upwards of 
a century ; for as one member of the 
house dropped off, some greener branch 
shot out from the old tree ; and there 
had never yet been any need to alter the 
treble repetition of the well-known name 
upon the brass plates that adorned the 
swinging mahogany doors of the bank- 
ing-house. To this brass plate Archi- 
bald Martin Floyd pointed when, some 
thirty years before the August evening 
of which I write, he took his raw-boned 
nephews for the first time across the 
threshold of his house of business. 

“ See there, boys,” he said ; “ look at 
the three names upon that brass plate. 
Y'our uncle George is over fifty, and a 
bachelor, — that’s the first name ; our 
first cousin, Stephen Floyd, of Calcutta, 
is going to sell out of the business before 
long, — that’s the second name; the third 
is mine, and I’m thirty-seven years of 
age, remember, boys, and not likely to 
make a fool of myself by marrying. Your 
names will be wanted by-and-by to fill 
the blanks ; see that you keep them 
bright in the mean time ; for let so much 
as one speck rest upon them, and they’ll 
never be fit for that brass plate.” 

Perhaps the rugged Scottish youths 
took this lesson to heart, or perhaps 
honesty was a natural and inborn virtue 
in the house of -Floyd. Be it as it might, 
neither Alick nor Andrew disgraced their 
ancestry ; and when Stephen Floyd, the 
East-Indian merchant, sold out, and un- 
cle George grew tired of business and 
took to building, as an elderly, bachelor- 
like hobby, the young men stepped into 
their relatives’ shoes, and took the con- 
duct of the business upon their broad 
northern shoulders. IJpon one point 
only Archibald Martin Floyd had mis- 
led his nephews, and that point regarded 
himself. Ten years after his address to 
the young men, at the sober age of seven- 
and-forty, the banker not only made a 
fool of himself by marrying, but, if in- 
deed such things are foolish, sank still 
further from the proud elevation of 
worldjy wisdom, by falling desperately 
in love with a beautiful but penniless 
woman, whom he brought home with 
him after a business tour through the 
manufacturing districts, and with but 
little ceremony introduced to his relations 


and the county families round his Kent- 
ish estate as his newly-wedded wife. 

The whole affair was so sudden, that 
these very county families had scarcely 
recovered from their surprise at reading 
a certain paragraph in the left-hand col- 
umn of the Times, announcing the mar- 
riage of “Archibald Martin Floyd, 
Banker, of Lombard Street and Felden 
Woods, to Eliza, only surviving daugh- 
ter of Captain Prodder,” when the bride- 
groom’s traveling carriage dashed past 
the Gothic lodge at his gates, along the 
avenue and under the great stone portico 
at the side of the house, and Eliza Floyd 
entered the banker’s mansion, nodding 
good-naturedly to the bewildered serv- 
ants, marshaled into the hall to receive 
their new mistress. 

The banker’s wife was a tall young 
woman, of about thirty, with a dark 
complexion, and great flashing black 
eyes that lit up a face, which might other- 
wise have been unnoticeable, into the 
splendor of absolute beauty. 

Let the reader recall one of those 
faces, whose sole loveliness lies in the 
glorious light of a pair of magnificent 
eyes, and remember how far they surpass 
all others in their power of fascination. 
The same amount of beauty frittered 
away upon a well-shaped nose, rosy pout- 
ing lips, symmetrical forehead, and deli- 
cate complexion, would make an ordina- 
rily lovely w'oman ; but concentrated in 
one nucleus, in the wondrous lustre of 
the eyes, it makes a divinity, a Circe. 
You may meet the first any day of your 
life ; the second, once in a lifetime. 

Mr. Floyd introduced his wife to the 
neighboring gentry at a dinner party 
which he gave soon after the lady’s ar- 
rival at Felden Woods, as his country- 
seat was called ; and this ceremony very 
briefly dispatched, he said no more about 
his choice either to his neighbors or his 
relations, who would have been very glad 
to hear how this unlooked-for marriage 
had come about, and who hinted the 
same to the happy bridegroom, but with- 
out effect. 

Of course this very reticence on the part 
of Archibald Floyd himself only set the 
thousand tongues of rumor more busily 
to work. Round Beckenham and West 
Wickham, near which villages Felden 
Woods w'as situated, there was scarcely 
any one debased and degraded station of 


AURORA FLOYD. 


25 


life from which Mrs. Floyd was not report- 
ed to have sprung. She was a factory-girl, 
and the silly old banker had seen her in 
the streets of Manchester, with a colored 
handkerchief on her head, a coral neck- 
lace round her throat, and shoeless and 
stockingless feet tramping in the mud : 
he had seen her thus, and had fallen in- 
continently in love with her, and offered 
to marry her there and then. She was 
an actress, and he had seen her on the 
Manchester stage ; nay, lower still, she 
was some poor performer, decked in dirty 
white muslin, red-cotton velvet, and 
spangles, who acted in a canvas booth, 
with a pitiful set of wandering vagabonds 
and a learned pig. Sometimes they said 
she was an equestrian, and it was at Ast- 
ley’s and not in the manufacturing dis- 
tricts, that the banker had first seen her ; 
nay, some there were ready to swear that 
they themselves had beheld her leaping 
through gilded hoops, and dancing the 
cachuca upon six bare-backed steeds, in 
that sawdust-strewn arena. There were 
whispered rumors than went even further 
than these, rumors which I dare not even 
set down here, for the busy tongues that 
dealt so mercilessly with the name and 
fame of Eliza Floyd were not unbarbed 
by malice. It may be that some of the 
ladies had personal reasons for their 
spite against the bride, and that many a 
waning beauty, in those pleasant Kentish 
mansions, had speculated upon the bank- 
er’s income, and the advantages attend- 
ant upon a union with the owner of Fel- 
den Woods. 

The daring, disreputable creature, 
with not even beauty to recommend her 
i — for the Kentish damsels scrupulously 
ignored Eliza’s wonderful eyes, and were 
sternly critical with her low' forehead, 
doubtful nose, and rather wide mouth — 
the artful, designing minx, who, at the 
mature age of nine-and-tw'enty, with her 
hair growing nearly down to her eye- 
brow's, had contrived to secure to herself 
the hand and fortune of the richest man 
in Kent — the man who had been hitherto 
so impregnable to every assault from 
bright eyes and rosy lips, that the most 
indefatigable of maneuvering mothers 
had given him up in despair, and ceased 
to make visionary and Alnaschar-like 
arrangements of the furniture in Mr. 
Floyd’s great red-brick palace. 

The female portion.of the community 


wondered indignantly at the supineness 
of the tw'o Scotch nephews, and the old 
bachelor brother, George Floyd. Why 
did not these people show a little spirit 
— institute a commission of lunacy, and 
shut their crazy relative in a madhouse ? 
He deserved it. 

The ruined noblesse of the Faubourg 
St. Germain, the faded duchesses and 
worn-out could not have abused 

a wealthy Buonapartist with more vigor- 
ous rancor, than these people employed 
in their ceaseless babble about the bank- 
er’s wife. Whatever she did was a new 
subject for ci’iticism ; even at that first 
dinner party, though Eliza had no more 
ventured to interfere wdth the arrange- 
ments of the man-cook and housekeeper 
than if she had been a visitor at Bucking- 
ham Palace, the angry guests found that 
everything had degenerated since “that 
woman” had entered the house. They 
hated the successful adventuress — hateo 
her for her beautiful eyes and her gor- 
geous jewels, the extravagant gifts of an 
adoring husband — hated her for hei 
stately figure and graceful movements, 
which never betrayed the rumored ob- 
scurity of her origin — hated her, above 
all, for her insolence in not appearing in 
the least afraid of the lofty members of 
that new abode in which she found her- 
self. 

If she had meekly eaten the ample 
dish of humble-pie which these county 
families were prepared to set before her 
— if she had licked the dust from their 
aristocratic shoes, courted their patron- 
age, and submitted to be “taken up” by 
them — they might perhaps in time have 
forgiven her. But she did none of this. 
If they called upon her, well and good ; 
she was frankly and cheerfully glad to 
see them. They might find her in her 
gardening-gloves, with rumpled hair and 
a watering-pot in her hands, busy among 
her conservatories; and she would re- 
ceive them as serenely as if she had been 
born in a palace, and used to homage from 
her very babyhood. Let them be as 
frigidly polite as they pleuvsed, she was 
ahvays easy, candid, gay, and good-na- 
tured. She would rattle away about her 
“dear old Archy,” as she presumed to 
call her benefactor and husband ; or she 
would show her guests some new picture 
he had bought, and would dare — the 
impudent, ignorant, pretentious crea- 


26 


AURORA FLOYD. 


ture I — to talk about Art, as if all the 
high-sounding jargon with which they 
tried to crush her was as familiar to her 
as to a Royal Academician. When eti- 
quette demanded her returning these 
stately visits, she would drive boldly up 
to her neighbors’ doors in a tiny basket- 
carriage, drawn by one rough pony ; for 
it was an affectation of this designing 
woman to affect simplicity in her tastes, 
and to abjure all display. She would 
take all the grandeur she met with as a 
thing of course, and chatter and laugh, 
with her flaunting theatric£^l animation, 
much to the admiration of misguided 
young men, who could not see the high- 
bred charms of her detractors, but who 
were never tired of talking of Mrs. 
Floyd’s jolly manners and glorious eyes. 

I wonder whether poor Eliza Floyd 
knew all or half the cruel things that 
were said of her. I shrewdly suspect 
that she contrived somehow or other to 
hear them all, and that she rather en- 
joyed the fun. She had been used to a 
life of excitement, and Felden Woods 
might have seemed dull to her but for 
these ever-fresh scandals. She took a 
malicious delight in the discomfiture of 
her enemies. 

“How badly they must have wanted 
you for a husband, Archy,” she said, 
“when they hate me so ferociously. 
Poor portionless old maids, to think 
that I should snatch their prey from 
them I I know they think it a hard 
thing that they can’t have me hung for 
marrying a rich man.” 

But the banker was so deeply wounded 
<vhen his adored wife repeated to him the 
gossip which she had heard from her 
maid, who was a staunch adherent to a 
kind, easy mistress, that Eliza ever after 
withheld these reports from him. They 
amused her, but they stung him t® the 
quick. Proud and sensitive, like almost 
all very honest and conscientious men, 
he could not endure that any creature 
should dare to befoul the name of the 
Woman he loved so tenderly. W^hat was 
the obscurity from which he had taken 
her to him ? Is a star less bright be- 
cause it shines on a gutter as well as 
upon the purple bosom of the midnight 
sea ? Is a virtuous and generous-hearted 
woman less worthy because you find her 
making a scanty living out of the only 
industry she can exercise ; and acting 


Juliet to an audience of factory-hands, 
who give threepence a-piece for the privi- 
lege of admiring and applauding her? 

Yes, the murder must out; the mali- 
cious were not altogether wrong in their 
conjectures : Eliza Prodder was an ac- 
tress; and it was on the dirty boards of 
a second-rate theatre in Lancashire that 
the wealthy banker had first beheld her. 
Archibald Floyd nourished a traditional, 
passive, but sincere admiration for the 
British Drama. Yes, the British Drama ; 
for he had lived in a day when the drama 
was British, and when George Barnwell 
and Jane Shore were amongst the fa- 
vorite works of art of a play-going publie. 
How sad that we should have degenera- 
ted since those classic days, and that the 
graceful story of Milwood and her ap- 
prentice-admirer is now so rarely set 
before us! Imbued, therefore, with the 
solemnity of Shakespeare and the drama, 
Mr. Floyd, stopping for a night at this 
second-rate Lancashire town, dropped 
into the dusty boxes of the theatre to 
witness the performance of Borneo and 
Juliet; the heiress of the Capulets being 
represented by Miss Eliza Percival, alias 
Prodder. 

I do not believe that Miss Percival 
was a good actress, or that she would 
ever have become distinguished in her 
profession ; but she had a deep melodious 
voice, which rolled out the words of her 
author in a certain rich though rather 
monotonous music, pleasant to hear; 
and upon the stage she w^as very beau- 
tiful to look at, for her face lighted up 
the little theatre better than all the gas 
that the manager grudged to his scanty 
audiences. 

It was not the fashion in those days 
to make “sensation” dramas of Shakes- 
peare’s plays. There was no Hamlet 
with the celebrated water-scene, and the 
Danish prince taking a “header” to save 
poor weak-witted Ophelia. In the little 
Lancashire theatre it would have been 
thought a terrible sin against all canons 
of dramatic art, had Othello or his An- 
cient attempted to sit down during any 
part of the solemn performance. The 
hope of Denmark was no long-robed 
Norseman with flowing flaxen hair, but 
an individual who wore a short rusty 
black cotton-velvet garment, shaped like 
a child’s frock and trimmed with bugles, 
which dropped off and were trodden 


AURORA FLOYD. 


upon at intervals throughout the per- 
formance. The simple actors held, that 
■ragedy, to be tragedy, must be utterly 
unlike any thing that had ever happened 
beneath the sun. And Eliza Prodder 
patiently trod the old beaten track, far 
too good-natured, light-hearted, and 
easy-going a creature to attempt any 
foolish interference with the crookedness 
of the times, which she was not born to 
set right. 

What can I say, then, about her per- 
formance of the impassioned Italian 
girl ? She wore white satin and span- 
gles, the spangles sewn upon the dirty 
hem of her dress, in the firm belief, com- 
mon to all provincial actresses, that 
spangles are an antidote to dirt. She 
was laughing and talking in the white- 
washed little green-room the very minute 
before she ran on to the stage to wail for 
her murdered kinsman and her banished 
lover. They tell us that Macready be- 
gan to be Richelieu .at three o’clock in 
the afternoon, and that it was dangerous 
to approach or to speak to him between 
that hour and the close of the per- 
formance- So dangerous, indeed, that 
surely none but the daring and misguided 
gentleman who once met the great trage- 
dian in a dark passage, and gave him 
“Good morrow, ‘Mac,’” would have 
had the temerity to attefnpt it. But 
Miss Percival did not take her profession 
very deeply to heart; the Lancashire 
salaries barely paid for the physical wear 
and tear of early rehearsals and long per- 
formances ; how, then, for that mental 
exhaustion of the true artist who lives 
in the character he represents ? 

The easy-going comedians with whom 
Eliza acted made friendly remarks to 
each other on their private affairs in the 
intervals of the most vengeful discourse ; 
speculated upon the amount of money in 
the house in audible undertones during 
the pauses of the scene ; and when Ham- 
let wanted Horatio down at the foot- 
lights to ask him if he “ marked that,” 
it was likely enough that the prince’s 
confidant was up the stage telling Po- 
lonius of the shameful way in which his 
landlady stole the tea and sugar. 

It was not, therefore. Miss Percival’s 
acting that fascinated the banker. Ar- 
chibald Floyd knew that she was as bad 
au actress as ever played the leading 
tragedy and comedy for five-and-twenty 


• 27 

shillings a week. He had seen Miss 
O’Neil in that very character, and it 
moved him to a pitying smile as the 
factory-hands applauded poor Eliza’s 
poison-scene. But for all this he fell 
in love with her. It was a repetition of 
the old story. It was Arthur Pendennis 
at the little Chatteris Theatre bewitched 
and bewildered by Miss Fotheringay all 
over again. Only that instead of a fee- 
ble, impressionable boy, it was a sober, 
steady-going business-man of seven-and- 
forty, w'ho had never felt one thrill of emo- 
tion in looking on a woman’s face until 
that night, — until that night, — and from 
that night to him the world only held 
one being, and life only had one object. 
He went the next evening, and the next, 
and then contrived to scrape acquaint- 
ance with some of the actors at a tavern 
next the theatre. They sponged upon 
him cruelly, these seedy comedians, and 
allowed him to pay for unlimited glasses 
of brandy-and-water, and flattered and 
cajoled him, and plucked out the heart 
of his mystery ; and then went back to 
Eliza Percival, and told her that she 
had dropped into a good thing, for that 
an old chap with no end of money had 
fallen over head and ears in love with 
her, and that if she played her cards 
w'ell, he would marry her to-morrow. 
They pointed him out to her through a 
hole in the green curtain, sitting almost 
alone in the shabby boxes, waiting for 
the play to begin and her black eyes to 
shine upon him once more. 

Eliza laughed at her conquest ; it was 
only one amongst many such, which had 
all ended alike, — leading to nothing bet- 
ter than the purchase of a box on her 
benefit-night, or a bouquet left for her 
at the stage-door. She did not know 
the power of first love upon a man of 
seven-and-forty. Before the week was 
out, Archibald Floyd had made her a 
solemn offer of his hand and fortune. 

He had heard a great deal about her 
from her fellow-performers, and had 
heard nothing but good. Temptations 
resisted; diamond-bracelets indignantly 
declined; graceful acts of gentle wo- 
manly charity done in secret; indepen- 
dence preserved through all poverty and 
trial ; — they told him a hundred stories 
of her goodness, that brought the blood 
to his fiice with proud and generous 
emotion. And she herself told him the 


AURORA FLOYD. 


28 

simple history of her life: told him that 
she was the daughter of a merchant-cap- 
tain called Prodder ; that she was born 
at Liverpool; that she remembered little 
of her father, who was almost always at 
sea ; nor of a brother, three years older 
than herself, who quarreled with his 
father, the merchant-captain, and ran 
away, and was never heard of again ; 
nor of her mother, who died when she, 
Eliza, was ten years old. The rest was 
told in a few words. She was taken 
into the family of an aunt who kept a 
grocer’s shop in Miss Prodder’s native 
town. She learnt artificial flower- 
making, and did not take to the busi- 
ness. She went often to the Liverpool 
theatres, and thought she would like to 
go upon the stage. Being a daring and 
energetic young person, she left her 
aunt’s house one day, walked straight to 
the stage-manager of one of the minor 
theatres, and asked him to let her ap- 
pear as Lady Macbeth. The man 
laughed at her, but told her that in con- 
sideration of her fine figure and black 
eyes, he would give her fifteen shillings 
a week to “ walk on,” as he technically 
called the business of the ladies who 
wander on the stage, sometimes dressed 
as villagers, soraetiines in court costume 
of calico trimmed with gold, and stare 
vaguely at whatever may be taking place 
in the scene. From “ walking on,” 
Eliza came to play minor parts, indig- 
nantly refused by her superiors ; from 
these she plunged ambitiously into the 
tragic lead, — and thus for nine years 
pursued the even tenor of her way ; until, 
close upon her nine-and- twentieth birth- 
day, Fate threw the wealthy banker 
across her pathway, and in the parish- 
church of a small town in the Potteries 
the black-eyed actress exchanged the 
name of Prodder for that of Floyd. 

She had accepted the rich man partly 
because, moved by a sentiment of grati- 
tude for the generous ardor of his affec- 
tion, she was inclined to like him better 
than any one else she knew ; and partly 
in accordance with the advice of her 
theatrical friends, who told her with 
more candor than elegance that she 
would be a jolly fool to let such a chance 
escape her; but at the time she gave her 
hand to Archibald Martin Floyd, she 
had no idea whatever of the magnitude 
of the fortune he had invited her to 


share. He told her that he was a 
banker, and her active mind immedi- 
ately evoked the image of the only 
banker’s wife she had ever known : a 
portly lady, who wore silk gowns, lived 
in a square stuccoed house with green 
blinds, kept a cook and housemaid, and 
took three box-tickets for Miss Perci- 
val’s benefit. 

When, therefore, the doting husband 
loaded his handsome bride with diamond 
bracelets and necklaces, and with silks 
and brocades that were stiff and unman- 
ageable from their very richness, — when 
he carried her straight from the Potteries 
to the Isle of Wight, and lodged her in 
spacious apartments at the best hotel in 
Ryde, and flung his money here and 
there, as if he had carried the lamp of 
Aladdin in his coat-pocket, — Eliza re- 
monstrated with her new master, fearing 
that his love had driven him mad, and 
that this alarming extravagance was the 
first outburst of insanity. 

It seemed a repetition of the dear old 
Burleigh story when Archibald Floyd 
took his wife into the long picture-gal- 
lery at Felden Woods. She clasped her 
hands for frank womanly joy as she 
looked at the magnificence about her. 
She compared herself to the humble 
bride of the marquis, and fell on her 
knees and did theatrical homage to her 
lord. “ 0 Archy,” she said, '' it is all 
too good for me. I am afraid I shall 
die of my grandeur, as the poor girl 
pined away at Burleigh House.” 

In the full maturity of womanly love- 
liness, rich in health, freshness, and high 
spirits, how little could Eliza dream that 
she would hold even a briefer lease of 
these costly splendors than the Bride of 
Burleigh had done before her. 

Now the reader, being acquainted 
with Eliza’s antecedents, may perhaps 
find in them some clue to the insolent 
ease and well-bred audacity with which 
Mrs. Floyd treated the second-rate 
county families, who were bent upon 
putting her to confusion. She was an 
actress; for nine years she had lived in 
that ideal world in which dukes and 
marquises are as common as butchers 
and bakers in work-a-day life, in which 
indeed a nobleman is generally a poor 
mean-spirited individual, who gets the 
worst of it on every hand, and is con- 
temptuously entreated by the audience 


AURORA FLOYD. 


29 


on account of his rank. How should 
she be abashed on entering the drawing- 
rooms of these Kentish mansions, when 
for nine years she had walked nightly on 
to a stage to be the focus for every eye, 
and to entertain her guests the evening 
through ? Was it likely she was to be 
overawed by the Lenfields, who were 
coach builders in Park Lane, or the Miss 
Manderlys, whose father had made his 
money by a patent for starch, — she, who 
had received King Duncan at the gates 
of her castle, and had sat on her throne 
dispensing condescending hospitality to 
the obsequious thanes at Dunsinane ? 
So, do what they would, they were un- 
able to subdue this base intruder ; while, 
to add to their mortification, it every day 
became more obvious that Mr. and Mrs. 
Floyd made one of the happiest couples 
who had ever worn the bonds of matri- 
mony, and changed them into garlands 
of roses. If this were a very romantic 
'story, it would be perhaps only proper 
for Eliza Floyd to pine in her gilded 
bower, and misapply her energies in 
weeping for some abandoned lover, de- 
serted in an evil hour of ambitious mad- 
ness. But as my story is a true one, — 
not only true in a general sense, but 
strictly true as to the leading facts which 
I am about to relate, — and as I could 
point out, in a certain county, far north- 
ward of the lovely Kentish woods, the 
very house in which the events I shall 
describe took place, I am bound also to 
be truthful here, and to set down as a 
fact that the love which Eliza Floyd 
bore for her husband was as pure and 
sincere an affection as ever man need 
hope to win from the generous heart of 
a good woman. What share gratitude 
may have had in that love, I cannot tell. 
If she lived in a handsome house, and 
was waited on by attentive and deferen- 
tial servants; if she ate of delicate dishes, 
and drank costly wines; if she wore rich 
dresses and splendid jewels, and lolled 
on the downy cushions of a carriage, 
drawn by high-mettled horses, and 
driven by a coachman with powdered 
hair; if, wherever she went, all outward 
semblance of homage was paid to her ; 
if she had but to utter a wish, and, swift 
as the stroke of some enchanter’s wand, 
that wish was gratified, — she knew that 
she owed all to her husband, Archibald 
Floyd ; and it may be that she grew, not 


unnaturally, to associate him with every 
advantage she enjoyed, and to love him 
for the sake of these things. Such a 
love as this may appear a low and de- 
spicable affection when compared to the 
noble sentiment entertained by the 
Nancys of modern romance for the Bill 
Sykeses of their choice ; and no doubt 
Eliza Floyd ought to have felt a sove- 
reign contempt for the man who watched 
her every whim, who gratified her every 
caprice, and who loved and honored her 
as much, ci-devant provincial actress 
though she was, as he could have done 
had she descended the steps of the lofti- 
est throne in Christendom to give him 
her hand. 

She was grateful to him, she loved 
him, and she made him perfectly happy. 
So happy that the strong-hearted Scotch- 
man was sometimes almost panio-strick- 
en at the contemplation of his own pros- 
perity, and would fall down on his knees 
and pray that this blessing might not be 
taken from him ; that, if it pleased Prov- 
idence to afflict him, he might be stripped 
of every shilling of his wealth and left 
penniless, to begin the world anew, — but 
with her. Alas, it was this blessing, of 
all others, that he was to lose I 

For a year Eliza and her husband 
lived this happy life at Felden Woods. 
He wished to take her on the Continent, 
or to London for the season ; but she 
could not bear to leave her lovely Kent- 
ish home. She was happier than the 
day was long amongst her gardens and 
pineries and graperies, her dogs and 
horses, and her poor. To these last she 
seemed an angel, descended from the 
skies to comfort them. There were cot- 
tages from which the prim daughters of 
the second-rate country families fled, 
tract in hand, discomfited and abashed 
by the black looks of the half-starved in- 
mates ; but upon whose doorways the 
shadow of Mrs. Floyd was as the shadow 
of a priest in a Catholic country — always 
sacred, yet ever welcome and familiar. 
She had the trick of making these people 
like her before she set to work to reform 
their evil habits. At an early stage of 
lier acquaintance with them, she was as 
blind to the dirt and disorder of their 
cottages as she would have been to a 
shabby carpet in the drawing-room of a 
poor duchess ; but by and by she would 
artfully hint at this and that little im- 


AUROKA FLOYD. 


30 

proveraent in the menages of her pen- 
sioners, until in less than a month, with- 
out having either lectured or offended, 
she had worked an entire transformation. 
Mrs. Floyd was frightfully artful in her 
dealings with these erring peasants. In- 
stead of telling them at once in a candid 
and Christian-like manner that they were 
all dirty, degraded, ungrateful, and irre- 
ligious, she diplomatised and finessed 
with them as if she had been canvassing 
the county. She made the girls regular 
in their attendance at church by means 
tof new bonnets ; she kept married men 
out of the public-houses by bribes of to- 
• "bacco to smoke at home, and once (oh, 
horror !) by the gift of a bottle of gin. 
She cured a dirty chimney-piece by the 
present of a gaudy china vase to its pro- 
prietress, and a slovenly hearth by means 
of a brass fender. She repaired a shrew- 
ish temper with a new gown, and patched 
up a family breach of long-standing with 
a chintz waistcoat. But one brief year 
after her marriage, — while busy land- 
scape-gardeners were working at the im- 
provements she had planned ; while the 
steady process of reformation was slowly 
but surely progressing amongst the grate- 
ful recipients of her bounty ; while the 
eager tongues of her detractors were still 
waging war upon her fair fame ; while 
Archibald Floyd rejoiced as he held a 
baby-daughter in his arms, — without one 
forewarning symptom to break the force 
of the blow, the light slowly faded out 
of those glorious eyes, never to shine 
again on this side of eternity, and Archi- 
bald Martin Floyd was a widower. 


CHAPTER II. 

AURORA. 

The child which Eliza Floyd left be- 
hind her, when she was so suddenly taken 
away from all earthly prosperity and hap- 
piness, was christened Aurora. The ro- 
mantic-sounding name had been a fancy 
of poor Eliza’s ; and there was no ca- 
price of hers, however trifling, that had 
not always been sacred with her adoring 
husband, and that was not doubly sacred 
now. The actual intensity of the wid- 
ower’s grief was known to no creature 


in this lower world. His nephews and 
his nephews’ wives paid him pertina- 
cious visits of condolence ; nay, one of 
these nieces by marriage, a good, mo- 
therly creature, devoted to her husband, 
insisted on seeing and comforting the 
stricken man. Heaven knows whether 
her tenderness did convey any comfort 
to that shipwrecked soul. She found 
him like a man who had suffered from a 
stroke of paralysis, torpid, almost imbe- 
cile. Perhaps she took the wisest course 
that could possibly have been taken. 
She said little to him upon the subject 
of his affliction ; but visited him fre- 
quently, patiently sitting opposite to him 
for hours at a time, he and she talking 
of all manner of easy conventional topics, 
— the state of the country, the weather, 
a change in the ministry, and such sub- 
jects as were so far remote from the 
grief of his life, that a less careful hand 
than Mrs. Alexander Floyd’s could have 
scarcely touched upon the broken chords 
of that ruined instrument, the widower’s 
heart. 

It was not until six months after 
Eliza’s death that Mrs. Alexander ven- 
tured to utter her name ; but when she 
did speak of her, it was with no solemn 
hesitation, but tenderly and familiarly, 
as if she had been accustomed to talk 
of the dead. She saw at once that she 
had done right. The time had come for 
the widower to feel relief in speaking of 
the lost one ; and from that hour Mrs. 
Alexander became a favorite with her 
uriQle. Years after, he told her that, 
even in the sullen torpor of his grief, he 
had had a dim consciousness that she 
pitied him, and that she was “ a good 
woman.” This good woman came that 
very evening into the big room, where 
tl^e banker sat by his lonely hearth, with 
a baby in her arms, — a pale-faced child, 
with great wondering black eyes, which 
stared at the rich man in sombre aston- 
ishment; a solemn-faced,' ugly baby, 
which was to grow by and by into Au- 
rora Floyd, the heroine of my story. 

That pale, black-eyed baby became 
henceforth the idol of Archibald Martin 
Floyd, the one object in all this wide 
universe for which it seemed worth his 
while to endure life. From the day of 
his wife’s death he had abandoned all 
active share in the Lombard-Street busi- 
ness, and he had now neither occupation 


AURORA FLOYD.- 


31 


nor delight, save in waiting upon the 
prattlings and humoring the caprices of 
this infant-daughter. His love for her 
was a weakness, almost verging upon a 
madness. Had his nephews been very 
designing men, they might perhaps have 
entertained some vague ideas of that 
commission of lunacy for which the out- 
raged neighbors were so anxious. He 
grudged the hired nurses their offices of 
love about the person of his child. He 
watched them furtively, fearful lest they 
should be harsh with her. All the pon- 
derous doors in the great house at Fel- 
den Woods could not drown the feeblest 
murmur of that infant voice to those 
ever-anxious, loving ears. 

He watched her growth as a child 
watches an acorn it hopes to rear to an 
oak. He repeated her broken baby- 
syllables till people grew weary of his 
babble about the child. Of course the 
end of all this was, that, in the common 
acceptation of the term, Aurora was 
spoiled. We do not say a flower is 
spoiled because it is reared in a hothouse 
where no breath of heaven can visit it 
too roughly ; but then, certainly, the 
bright exotic is trimmed and pruned by 
the gardener’s merciless hand, while Au- 
rora shot whither she would, and there 
was none to lop the wandering branches 
of that luxuriant nature. She said what 
she pleased ; thought, spoke, acted as 
she pleased ; learned what she pleased ; 
and she grew into a bright impetuous 
being, affectionate and generous-hearted 
as her mother, but with some touch of 
native tire blended in her mould that 
stamped her as original. It is the com- 
mon habit of ugly babies to grow into 
handsome women, and so it was with 
Aurora Floyd. At seventeen she was 
twice as beautiful as her mother had 
been at nine-and-twenty, but with much 
the same irregular features, lighted up 
by a pair of eyes that were like the stars 
of heaven, and by two rows of peerlessly 
white teeth. You rarely, in looking at 
her face, could get beyond these eyes 
and teeth ; for they so dazzled and 
blinded you that they defied you to crit- 
icise the doubtful little nose, or the 
width of the smiling mouth. What if 
those masses of blue-black hair were 
brushed away from a forehead too low 
for the common standard of beauty ? A 
phrenologist would have told you that 


the head was a noble one ; and a sculp- 
tor would have added that it was set 
upon the throat of a Cleopatra. 

Miss Floyd knew very little of her 
poor mother’s history. There was a 
picture in crayons hanging in the bank- 
er’s sanctum sanctorum which repre- 
sented Eliza in the full flush of her beauty 
and prosperity ; but the portrait told 
nothing of the history of its original, 
and Aurora had never heard of the mer- 
chant-captain, the poor Liverpool lodg- 
ing, the grim aunt who kept a chandler’s 
shop, the artificial-flower making, and 
the provincial stage. She had never 
been told that her maternal grandfather’s 
name was Prodder, and that her mother 
had played Juliet to an audience of fac- 
tory hands, for the moderate and some- 
times uncertain stipend of four-and-two- 
pence a night. The county families 
accepted and made much of the rich 
banker’s heiress ; but they were not slow 
to say that Aurora was her mother’s 
own daughter, and had the taint of the 
play-acting and horse-riding, the span- 
gles and the sawdust, strong in her na- 
ture. The truth of the matter is, that 
before Miss Floyd emerged from the 
nursery she evinced a very decided ten- 
dency to become what is called “fast.” 
At six years of age she rejected a doll, 
and asked for a rocking-horse. At ten 
she could converse fluently upon the 
subject of pointers, setters, fox-hounds, 
harriers, and beagles, though she drove 
her governess to the verge of despair by 
persistently forgetting under what Ro- 
man emperor Jerusalem was destroyed, 
and who was legate to the Pope at the 
time of Catherine of Arragon’s divorce. 
At eleven she talked unreservedly of 
the horses in the Lenfield stables as a 
pack of screws ; at twelve she contrib- 
uted her half-crown to a Derby sweep- 
stakes amongst her father’s servants, and 
triumphantly drew the winning horse; 
and at thirteen she rode across country 
with her uncle Andrew, who was a mem- 
ber of the Croydon hunt, it wms not 
without grief that the banker watched 
his daughter’s progress in these doubtful 
' accomplishments ; but she was so beau- 
I tiful, so frank and fearless, so generous, 

: affectionate, and true, that he could not 
I bring himself to tell her that she was 
not all he could desire her to be. If he 
could have governed or directed that 


32 


'AURORA FLOYD. 


impetuous nature, he would have had 
her the most refined and elegant, the 
most perfect and accomplished of her 
sex; but he could not do this, and he 
was fain to thank God for her as she 
was, and to indulge her every whim. 

Alexander Floyd’s eldest daughter, 
Lucy, first cousin, once removed, to Au- 
rora, was that young lady’s friend and 
confidajite, and came now and then from 
her father’s villa at Fulham to spend a 
month at Felden Woods. But Lucy 
Floyd had half a dozen brothers and 
sisters, and was brought up in a very dif- 
ferent manner to the heiress. She was 
a fair-faced, blue-eyed, rosy-Mpped, gold- 
en-haired little girl, who thought Felden 
Woods a paradise upon earth, and Au- 
rora more fortunate than the Princess 
Iloyal of England, or Titania, Queen of 
the Fairies. She was direfully afraid 
of her cousin’s ponies and Newfoundland 
dogs, and had a firm conviction that sud- 
den death held his throne within a certain 
radius of a horse’s heels ; but she loved 
and admired Aurora, after the manner 
common to these weaker nat>ires, and 
accepted Miss Floyd’s superb patronage 
and protection as a thing of course. 

The day came when some dark but 
undefined cloud hovered about the nar- 
row home-circle at Felden W^oods. 
There was a coolness between the banker 
and his beloved child. The young lady 
spent half her time on horseback, scour- 
ing the shady lanes round Beckenham, 
attended only by her groom — a dashing 
young fellow, chosen by Mr. Floyd on 
account of his good looks for Aurora’s 
especial service. She dined in her own 
room after these long, lonely rides, leav- 
ing her father to eat his solitary meal in 
the vast dining-room, which seemed to 
be fully occupied when she sat in it, and 
desolately empty without her. The 
household at Felden Woods long remem- 
bered one particular June evening on 
which the storm burst forth between the 
father and daughter. 

Aurora had been absent from two 
o’clock in the afternoon until sunset, and 
the banker paced the long stone terrace 
with his watch in his hand, the figures 
on the dial-plate barely distinguishable 
in the twilight, waiting for his daughter’s 
coming home. He had sent his dinner 
away untouched ; his newspapers lay un- 
cut upon the table, and the houshold- 


spies, we call servants, told each other 
how his hand had shaken so violently 
that he had spilled half a decanter of 
wine over the polished mahogany in at- 
tempting to fill his glass. The house- 
keeper and her satellites crept into the 
hall, and looked through the half-glass 
doors at the anxious watcher on the ter- 
race. The men in the stables talked of 
“the row,” as they called this terrible 
breach between father and child ; and 
when at last horses’ hoofs were heard in 
the long avenue, and Miss Floyd reined 
in her thorough-bred chestnut at the foot 
of the terrace steps, there was a lurking 
audience hidden here and there in the 
evening shadow, eager to hear and see. 

But there was very little to gratify 
these prying eyes and ears. Aurora 
sprang lightly to the ground before the 
groom could dismount to assist her, and 
the chestnut, with heaving and foam- 
flecked sides, was led off to the stable. 

Mr. Floyd watched the groom and the 
two horses as they disappeared through 
the great gates leading to the stable- 
yard, and then said very quietly, “You 
don’t use that animal well, Aurora. A 
six hours’ ride is neither good for her 
nor for you. Your groom should have 
known better than to allow it.” He led 
the way into his study, telling his daugh- 
ter to follow him, and they were closeted 
together for upwards of an hour. 

Early the next morning Mi.ss Floyd’s 
governess departed from Felden Woods, 
and between breakfast and luncheon the 
banker paid a visit to the stables, and 
examined his daughter’s favorite chest- 
nut mare, a beautiful filly, all bone and 
muscle, that had been trained fora racer. 
The animal had strained a sinew, and 
walked lame. Mr. Floyd sent for his 
daughter’s groom, and paid and dis- 
missed him on the spot. The young 
fellow made no remonstrance, but went 
quietly to his quarters, took off his livery, 
packed a carpet-bag, and walked awmy 
from the house without bidding good- 
bye to his fellow-servants, who resented 
the affront, and pronounced him a surly 
brute whose absence was no loss to the 
household. 

Three days after this, upon the 14th 
of June, 1856, Mr. Floyd and his daugh- 
ter left Felden Woods for Paris, w’here 
Aurora was placed at a very expensive 
and exclusive Protestant finishing school, 


AURORA FLOYD. 


33 


kept by the Demoiselles Lesparcl, in a 
stately mansion entre cour et jardin in 
the Rue Saint-Dominique, there to com- 
plete her very imperfect education. 

For a year and two months Miss 
Floyd has been away at this Parisian 
fiiiishine; school ; it is late in the August' 
of 1857, and again the banker walks 
upon the long stone terrace in front of 
the narrow windows of his red-brick 
mansion, this time waiting for Aurora’s 
arrival from Paris. The servants have 
expressed considerable wonder at his not 
crossing the Channel to fetch his daugh- 
ter, and they think the dignity of the 
house somewhat lowered by Miss Floyd’s 
traveling unattended. 

“ A poor dear young thing, that knows 
no more of this wicked world than a 
blessed baby,” said the housekeeper, “ all 
alone amongst a pack of moustachioed 
Frenchmen.” 

Archibald Martin Floyd had grown 
an old man in one day — that terrible 
and unexpected day of his wife’s death ; 
but even the grief of that bereavement 
had scarcely seemed to affect him so 
strongly as the loss of his daughter Au- 
rora during the fourteen months of her 
absence from Felden Woods. 

Perhaps it was that at sixty-five years 
of age he was less able to bear even a 
lesser grief ; but. those who watched him 
closely, declared that he seemed as 
much dejected by his daughter’s absence 
as he could well have been by her death. 
Even now, that he paces up and down 
the broad terrace, with the landscape 
stretching wide before him, and melting 
vaguely away under that veil of crimson 
glory shed upon all things by the sink- 
ing sun ; even now that he hourly, nay 
almost momentarily, expects to clasp 
his only child in his arms, Archibald 
Floyd seems rather nervously anxious 
than joyfully expectant. 

He looks again and again at his 
watch, and pauses in his walk to listen 
to Beckenham church-clock striking 
eight ; his ears are preternaturally alert 
to every sound, and give him instant 
warning of carriage-wheels far off upon 
the wide high-road. All the agitation 
and anxiety he has felt for the last week 
has been less than the concentrated 
2 


fever of this moment. Will it pass on, 
that carriage, or stop at the lodge- 
gates? • Surely his heart could never 
beat so loud save by some wondrous 
magnetism of fatherly love and hope. 
The carriage stops. lie hears the 
clanking of the gates ; the crimson- 
tinted landscape grows dim and blurred 
before his eyes, and he knows no more 
till a pair of impetuous arms are twined 
about his neck, and Aurora’s face is 
hidden on his shoulder. 

It was a paltry hired carriage which 
Miss Floyd arrived in, and it drove 
away as soon as she had alighted, and 
the small amount of luggage she brought 
had been handed to the eager servants. 
The banker led his child into the study, 
where they had held that long confer- 
ence fourteen months before. A lamp 
burned upon the library table, and it 
was to this light that Archibald Floyd 
led his daughter. 

A year had changed the girl to a 
woman — a woman with great hollow 
l)lack eyes, and pale haggard cheeks. 
The course of study at the Parisian 
finishing school had evidently been too 
hard for the spoiled heiress. 

“ Aurora, Aurora,” the old man cried 
piteously, “ how ill you look 1 — how 
altered, how — ” 

She laid her hand lightly yet impe- 
riously upon his lips. 

“ Don’t speak of me,” she said, “ I 
shall recover; but you — you, father — 
you too are changed.”' 

She was as tall as her father, and, 
resting her hand upon his shoulders, she 
looked at him long and earnestly. As 
she looked, the tears welled slowly up 
to her eyes which had been dry before, 
and poured silently down her haggard 
cheeks. 

“ My father, my devoted father,” she 
said in a broken voice, “ if my heart was 
made of adamant I think it might break 
when I see* the change in this beloved 
face.” 

The old man checked her with a ner- 
vous gesture, a gesture almost of terror. 

“Not one word, not one word, Au- 
rora,” he said hurriedly; “at least, only 
one. That person— he is dead ?” 

“ He is!” 


34 


AURORA FLOYD. 


CHAPTER III. 

WIIAT BECAME OF THE DIAMOND 
BBACELET. 

Aurora’s aunts, uncles, and cousins 
were not slow to exclaim upon the 
change for the worse which a twelve- 
month in Paris had made in their young 
kinswoman. I fear that the Demoiselles 
Lespard suffered considerably in reputa- 
tion amongst the circle round Felden 
Woods from Miss Floyd’s impaired 
good looks. She was out of spirits too, 
had no a])petite, slept badly, was nerv- 
ous and hysterical, no longer took any 
interest in her dogs and horses, and was 
altogether an altered creature. Mrs. 
Alexander Floyd declared it was per- 
fectly clear that these cruel French- 
women had worked poor Aurora to a 
shadow : the girl was not used to study, 
she said ; she had been accustomed to 
exercise and open air, and no doubt 
pined sadly in the close atmosphere of 
a vschoolroom. 

But Aurora’s was one of those im- 
pressionable natures which quickly re- 
cover from any depressing influence. 
Early in September Lucy Floyd came 
to Felden Woods, and found her hand- 
some cousin almost entirely recovered 
from the drudgery of the Parisian pen- 
sion, but still very loth to talk much of 
that seminary. She answered Lucy’s 
eager questions very curtly; said that 
she hated the Demoiselles Lespard and 
the Rue Saint Dominique, and that the 
very memory of Paris was disagreeable 
to her. Like most young ladies with 
black eyes and blue-black hair. Miss 
Floyd was a good hater; so Lucy for- 
bore to ask for more information upon 
what was so evidently an unpleasant 
subject to her cousin. Poor Lucy had 
been mercilessly well educated ; she 
spoke half a dozen languages, knew all 
about the natural sciences, had read 
Gibbon,. Niebuhr, and Arnold from the 
title-page to the printer’s name, and 
looked upon the heiress as a big bril- 
liant dunce ; so she quietly set down 
Aurora’s dislike to Paris to that young 
lady’s distaste for tuition, and thought 
little more about it. Any other reasons 
for Miss Floyd’s almost shuddering 
horror of her Parisian associations lay 


far beyond Lucy’s simple power of 
penetration. 

The fifteenth of September was Au- 
rora’s birthday, and Archibald Floyd 
determined, upon this the nineteenth 
anniversary of his daughter’s first ap- 
pearance on this mortal scene, to give 
an entertainment, whereat his county 
neighbors and town acquaintance might 
alike behold and admire the beautiful 
heiress. 

Mrs. Alexander came to Felden 
Woods to superintend the preparations 
for this birthday ball. She drove Au- 
rora and Lucy into town to order the 
supper and the band, and to choose 
dresses and wreaths for the young ladies. 
The banker’s heiress was sadly out of 
place, in a milliner’s showroom ; but she 
had that rapid judgment as to color, 
and that* perfect taste in form, which 
bespeak the soul of an artist ; and while 
poor mild Lucy was giving endless trou- 
ble, and tumbling innumerable boxes of 
flowers, before she could find any head- 
dress in harmony with her rosy cheeks 
and golden hair, Aurora, after one brief 
glance at the bright of painted 

cambric, pounced upon a crown-shaped 
garland of vivid scarlet berries, with 
drooping and tangled leaves of dark 
shining green, that looked as if they 
had been just plucked from a running 
streamlet. She watched Lucy’s per- 
plexities with a half-compassionate, half- 
contemptuous smile. 

“Look at that poor child. Aunt Liz- 
zie,” she said ; “I know that she would 
like to put pink and yellow against her 
golden hair. Why, you silly Lucy, don’t 
you know that yours is the beauty which 
really does not want adornment ? A 
few pearls or forget-me-not blossoms, or 
a crown of water-lilies and a cloud of 
white areophane, would make you look 
a sylphide ; but I dare say you would 
like to wear amber satin and cabbage- 
roses.” 

From the milliner’s they drove to Mr. 
Gunter’s in Berkeley Square, at which 
world-renowned establishment Mrs. Al- 
exander commanded those preparations 
of turkeys preserved in jelly, hams cun- 
ningly embalmed in rich wines and 
broths, and other specimens of that sub- 
lime art of confectionery which hovers 
midway between sleight-of-hand and 


AURORA FLOYD. 


35 


CM^okery, and in which the Berkeley- ' 
Square professor is without a rival. 
When poor Thomas Babington Ma- 
caulay’s New-Zealander shall come to 
])onder over the ruins of St. Paul’s, per- 
haps he will visit the remains of this 
humbler temple in Berkeley Square, and 
wonder at the ice-pails and jelly-moulds, 
the refrigerators and stewpans, and hot 
])hites long cold and unheeded, and all 
the mysterious paraphernalia of the dead 
art. 

From the West-End Mrs. Alexander 
drove to Charing cross; she had a com- 
mission to execute at Dent’s — the pur- 
chase of a watch for one of her boys, who 
was just olf to Eton. 

Aurora threw herself wearily back in 
the carriage while her aunt and Lucy 
stopped at the watchmaker’s. It was to 
be observed that, although Miss Floyd 
had recovered much of her old brilliancy 
and gaiety of temper, a certain gloomy 
shade would sometimes steal over her 
countenance when she was left to herself 
for a few minutes ; a darkly reflective 
expression quite foreign to her face. 
This shadow fell upon her beauty now 
as she looked out of the open window, 
moodily watching the passers-by. Mrs. 
Alexander was a long time making her 
purchase ; and Aurora had sat nearly a 
quarter of an hour blankly staring at the 
shifting figures in the crowd, when a man 
hurrying by was attracted by her face at 
the carriage-window, and started, as if 
at some great surprise. He passed on, 
however, and walked rapidly towards 
the Horse Guards; but before he turned 
the corner, came to a dead stop, stood 
still for two or three minutes scratching 
the back of his head reflectively with his 
big, bare hand, and then walked slowly 
back towards Mr. Dent’s emporium. 
He was a broad-shouldered, bull-necked, 
sandy- whiskered fellow, wearing a cut- 
away coat and a gaudy neckerchief, and 
smoking a huge cigar, the rank fumes of 
which struggled with a very powerful 
odor of rum-and-water recently imbibed. 
This gentleman’s standing in society was 
betrayed by the smooth head of a bull- 
terrier, whose round eyes peeped out of 
the pocket of his cut-away coat, and by a 
Blenheim spaniel carried iinder his arm. 
He was the very last person, amongst 
all the souls between Cockspur Street 
and the statue of King Charles, who 


seemed likely to have any thing to say 
to Miss Aurora Floyd ; nevertheless he 
walked deliberately up to the carriage, 
and, planting his elbows upon the door, 
nodded to her with friendly familia- 
rity. 

“Well,” he said, without inconve- 
niencing himself by the removal of the 
rank cigar, “how do?” 

After which brief salutation he re- 
lapsed into silence, and rolled his great 
brown eyes slowly here and there, in con- 
templative examination of Miss Floyd 
and the vehicle in which she sat ; even 
carrying his powers of observation so far 
as to take particular notice of a plethoric 
morocco-bag lying on the back seat, and 
to inquire casually whether there was 
“any thing wallable iii the old party’s 
redicule ?” 

But Aurora did -not allow him long for 
this leisurely employment ; for looking 
at him with her eyes flashing forked 
lightnings of womanly fury, and her face 
crimson with indignation, ’she asked him 
in a sharp spasmodic tone whether he 
had any thing to say to her. 

He had a great deal to say to her ; 
but as he put his head in at the carriage- 
window and made his communication, 
whatever it might be, in a rum-and-wa- 
tery whisper, it reached no ears but those 
of Aurora herself. When he had done 
whispering, he took a greasy leather- 
covered account-book, and a short stump 
of lead pencil, considerably the worse for 
chewing, from his waistcoat pocket, and 
wrote two or three lines upon a leaf, 
which he tore out and handed to Aurora. 
“This is the address,” he said; “you 
won’t forget to send ?” 

She shook her head, and looked away 
from him — looked away with an irre- 
pressible gesture of disgust and loathing. 

“ You wouldn’t like to buy a spannel 
dawg,” said the man, holding the sleek, 
curly, black-and-tan animal up to the 
carriage-window; “or a French poodle 
what’ll balance a bit of bread on his 
nose while you count ten ? Hay ? Y'ou 
should have him a bargain — say fifteen 
pound the two.” 

“Ko !” 

At this moment Mrs. Alexander 
emerged from the watchmaker’s just in 
time to catch a glimpse of the man’s 
broad shoulders as he moved sulkily 
away from the carriage. 


36 


AURORA FLOYD. 


“ Has that person been begpring of yon, 
Aurora she asked, as tliey drove off. 

“No. I once bought a dog of him, 
and he recognized rne.” 

“ And wanted you to buy one to-day 

“Yes.” 

Miss Floyd sat gloomily silent during 
the whole of the homeward drive, looking 
out of the carriage-window, and not 
deigning to take any notice whatever of 
her aunt and cousin. I do not know 
whether it was in submission to that pal- 
])able superiority of force and vitality in 
Aurora’s nature which seemed to .set 
lier above her fellow's, or simply in that 
inherent spirit of toadyism common to 
the best of us ; but Mrs. Alexander and 
her fair-haired daughter alwmys paid 
mute reverence to the banker’s heiress, 
and w'ere silent when it pleased her, or 
conversed at her royal wdll. I verily 
believe that it was Aurora’s eyes rather 
than Archibald Martin Floyd’s thous- 
ands that overawed all her kinsfolk ; and 
that if she had been a street-sweeper 
dressed in rags, and begging for half- 
pence, people w'ould have feared her and 
made way for her, and bated their breath 
v/hen she was angry. 

The trees in the long avenue of Fel- 
den Woods w'ere hung w'ith sparkling 
colored lamps, to light the guests who 
came to Aurora’s birthday festival. The 
long range of wdndows on the ground- 
floor w'as a-blaze with light ; the crash 
of the band burst every now' and then 
above the perpetual roll of carriage- 
wdieels, and the shouted repetition of 
visitors’ names, and pealed across the 
silent w'oods; through the long vista of 
lialf a dozen rooms opening one into an- 
other, the waters of a fountain, sparkling 
with a hundred hues in the light, glit- 
tered amid the dark floral w'ealth of a 
conservatory filled wMth exotics. Great 
clusters of tropical plants were grouped 
in the spacious hall; festoons of flowers 
hung about the vapory curtains in the 
arched doorways. Light and splendor 
were everywhere around; and amid all, 
and more splendid than all, in the dark 
grandeur of her beauty, Aurora Floyd, 
crowned with scarlet, and robed in vvhite, 
stood by her father’s side. 

Amongst the guests W'ho arrive latest 
at Mr. Floyd’s ball are two officers from 
Windsor, who have driven across the 
country in a mail-phaeton. The elder 


of these tw'o, and the driver of the vehi- 
cle, has been very discontented and dis- 
agreeable throughout the journey. 

“ If I’d had the remotest idea of the 
distance, Maldon,” he said, “I’d have 
seen you and your Kentish banker very 
considerably inconvenienced before I 
would have consented to victimize my 
horses for the sake of this snobbish 
party.” 

“But it won’t be a snobbish party,” 
answered the young man impetuously. 
“ Archibald Floyd is the best fellow 
in Christendom, and as for his daugh- 
ter — ” 

“ Oh, of course, a divinity, w'ith fifty 
thousand pounds for her fortune; all of 
which will no doubt be very tightly set- 
tled upon herself if she is ever allowed 
to marry a penniless scapegrace like 
Francis Lewis Maldon, of ller Majesty’s 
11th Huzzars. However, I don’t w'ant 
to stand in your way, my boy. Go in 
and win, and my blessing be upon your 
virtuous endeavors. I can imagine the 
young Scotchwoman — red hair (of course 
you’ll call it auburn), large feet, and 
freckles I” 

“Aurora Floyd — red hair and 
freckles !” The young officer laughed 
aloud at the stupendous joke. “ You’ll 
see her in a quarter of an hour, Bul- 
strode,” he said. 

Talbot Bulstrode, Captain of Her 
Majesty’s 11th Huzzars, had consented 
to drive his brother-officer from Wind- 
sor to Beckenham, and to array himself 
in his uniform, in order to adorn there- 
with the festival at Felden Woods, 
chiefly because, having at two-and-thirty 
years of age run through all the wealth 
of life’s excitements and amusements, 
and finding himself a penniless spend- 
thrift in this species of coin, though well 
enough olf for mere sordid riches, he was 
too tired of himself and the world to 
care much whither his friends and com- 
rades led him. He was the eldest son 
of a wealthy Cornish baronet, whose an- 
cestor had received his title straight 
from the hands of Scottish King James, 
when baronetcies first came into fashion ; 
the same fortunate ancestor being near 
akin to a certain noble, erratic, unfortu- 
nate, and injured gentleman called Wal- 
ter Raleigh, and by no means too well 
used by the same Scottish James. Now 
of all the pride which ever swelled the 


AURORA FLOYD. 


breasts of mankind, tbe pride of Cornish- 
meii is perhaps the strongest; and the 
Bulstrode family was one of the proudest 
in Cornwall. Talbot was no alien son 
of this haughty house; from his very 
babyhood he had been the proudest of 
mankind. This pride had been the sav- 
ing power that had presided over his 
prosperous career. Other men might 
have made a downhill road of that 
smooth pathway which wealth and 
grandeur made so pleasant, but not Tal- 
bot Bulstrode. Tlie vicesand follies of 
the common herd were perhaps retriev- 
able, but vice or folly in a Bulstrode 
would have left a blot upon a hitherto 
unblemished scutcheon never to be erased 
by time or tears. That pride of birth, 
which was utterly unallied to pride of 
wealth or station, had a certain noble 
and chivalrous side, and Talbot Bul- 
Etrode was beloved by many a parvenu 
whom meaner men would have insulted. 
In the ordinary affairs of life he was as 
humble as a woman or a child ; it was 
only when Honor was in question that 
the sleeping dragon of pride which had 
guarded the golden apples of his youth, 
])urity, probity, and truth, awoke and 
bade defiance to the enemy. At two- 
and thirty he was still a bachelor, not 
because he had never loved, but because 
he* had never met with a woman whose 
Stainless purity of soul fitted her in his 
eyes to become the mother of a noble 
race, and to rear sons who should do 
honor to the name of Bulstrode. He 
looked for more than ordinary every- 
day virtue in the woman of his choice ; 
he demanded those grand and queenly 
qualities which are rarest in womankind. 
Fearless truth, a sense of honor keen as 
his own, loyalty of purpose, unselfish- 
ness, a soul untainted by the petty base- 
nesses of daily life, — all these he sought 
in the being he loved ; and at the first 
warning thrill of emotion caused by a 
pair of beautiful eyes, he grew critical 
and captious about their owner, and be- 
gan to look for infinitesimal stains upon 
the shining robe of her virginity. He 
would have married a beggar’s daughter 
if she had reached his almost impossible 
standard ; he would have rejected the 
descendant of a race of kings if she had 
fallen one decimal part of an inch below 
it. Women feared Talbot Bulstrode; 
mancEuvring mothers shrank abashed 


37 

from the cold light of those watchful 
gray eyes ; daughters to marry blushed 
and trembled, and felt their pretty affec- 
tations, their ball-room properties, drop 
away from them under the quiet gaze of 
the young officer ; till from fearing him, 
the lovely flutterers grew to shun and 
dislike him, and to leave Bulstrode 
Castle and the Bulstrode fortune un- 
angled for in the great matrimonial 
fisheries. So at two-and-thirty Talbot 
walked serenely safe amid the meshes 
and pitfalls of Belgravia, secure in the 
popular belief 'that Captain Bulstrode 
of the 11th Hussars was not a marrying 
man. This belief was perhaps strength- 
ened by the fact that the Cornishman 
was by no means the elegant ignoramus 
whose sole accomplishments consist in 
parting his hair, waxing his moustaebios, 
and smoking a* meerschaum that has 
been colored by his valet, and who has 
become the accepted type of the mili- 
tary man in time of peace. 

Talbot Bulstrode was fond of scien- 
tific pursuits ; he neither smoked, drank, 
nor gambled. He had only been to the 
Derby once in his life, and on that one 
occasion had walked quietly away from 
the Stand while the great race was 
being run, and the white faces were 
turned towards the fatal Corner, and 
men were sick with terror and anxiety 
and frenzied with the madness of sus- 
pense. He never hunted, though he 
rode like Colonel Asheton Smith. He 
was a perfect swordsman, and one of 
Mr. Angelo’s pet pupils, a favorite 
lounger in the gallery of that simple- 
hearted, honourable-minded gentleman ; 
but he had never handled a billiard-cue 
in his life, nor had he touched a card 
since the days of his boyhood, when he 
took a hand at long whist with his 
father and mother and the parson of the 
parish, in the south drawing-room at 
Bulstrode Castle. He had a peculiar 
aversion to all games of chance and 
skill, contending that it was beneath a 
gentleman to employ, even for amuse- 
ment, the implements of the sharper’s 
])itiful trade. His rooms were as neatly 
kept as those of a woman. Cases of 
mathematical instruments took the place 
of cigar-boxes ; proof impressions of 
Raphael adorned the walls ordinarily 
covered with French prints, and water- 
colored sporting sketches from Acker- 


38 


AURORA FLOYD. 


mann’s emporium. lie was familiar 
with every turn of expression in Des- 
cartes and Condillac, but would have 
been sorely puzzled to translate the 
argotic locutions of Monsieur de Kock, 
j)cre. Those who spoke of him summed i 
liim up by saying that he wasn’t a bit 
like an officer; but there was a certain 
regiment of foot, which he had com- 
manded when the heights. of Inkermann 
were won, whose ranks told another 
story of Captain Bulstrode. He had 
made an^exchaiige into the 11th Hussars 
on his return from the Crimea, whence, 
among other distinctions, he had brought 
a stiff leg, which for a time disqualilied 
him from dancing. It was from pure 
benevolence, therefore, or from that in- 
difference to all things which is easily 
mistaken for unselfishness, that Talbot 
Bulstrode had consented to accept an 
invitation to the ball at Felden Woods. 

The banker’s guests were not of that 
charmed circle familiar to the Captain 
of Hussars ; so Talbot, after a brief 
introduction to his host, fell back among 
the crowd assembled in one of the door- 
ways, and quietly watched the dancers; 
not unobserved himself, however, for he 
was just one of those people who will 
not pass in a crowd. Tall and broad- 
chested, with a pale whiskerless face, 
aquiline nose, clear, cold, gray eyes, 
thick moustache, and black hair, worn 
as closely cropped as if he had lately 
emerged from Coldbath Fields or Mill- 
bank prison, he formed a striking con- 
trast to the yellow-whiskered young 
ensign who had accompanied him. 
Even that stiff leg, which in others 
might have seemed a blemish, added to 
the distinction of his appearance, and, 
coupled with the glittering orders on 
the breast of his uniform, told of deeds 
of prowess lately done. He took very 
little delight in the gay assembly re- 
volving before him to one of Charles 
d’Albert’s waltzes. He had heard the 
same music before, executed by the same 
band ; the faces, though unfamiliar to 
him, were not new : dark beauties in 
pink, fair beauties in blue; tall dashing 
beauties in silks, and laces, and jewels, 
and splendor ; modestly downcast beau- 
ties in white crape and rose-buds. They 
had all been spread for him, those fami- 
liar nets of gauze and areophane, and 
he had escaped them all ; and the name 


of Bulstrode might drop out of the his- 
tory of Cornish gentry to find no record 
save upon grave-stones, but it would 
never be tarnished by an unworthy race, 
or dragged through the mire of a di- 
1 vorce court by a guilty woman. While 
he lounged against the pillar of a door- 
way, leaning on his cane, and resting 
his lame leg, and wondering lazily whe- 
ther there was any thing upon eaiuh 
that repaid a man for the trouble of 
living. Ensign Maldoii approached him 
with a woman’s gloved hand lying 
lightly on his arm, and a divinity walk- 
ing by his side. A divinity! impe- 
riously beautiful in white and scarlet, 
painfully dazzling to look upon, intoxi- 
catingly brilliant to behold. Captain 
Bulstrode had served in India, and had 
once tasted a horrible spirit called bhang, 
which made the men who drank it half 
mad; and he could not help fancying 
that the beauty of this woman was like 
the strength -of that alcoholic prepara- 
tion ; barbarous, intoxicating, danger- 
ous, and maddening. 

His brother-officer presented him to 
this wonjf5erful creature, and he found 
that her earthly name was Aurora 
Floyd, and that she was the heiress of 
Felden Woods. 

Talbot Bulstrode recovered himself 
in a moment. This imperious creatilre, 
this Cleopatra in crinoline, had a low 
forehead, a nose that deviated from the 
line of beauty, and a wide mouth. What 
was she but another trap set in white 
muslin, and baited with artificial flowers, 
like the rest? She was to have fifty 
thousand pounds for her portion, so she 
didn’t want a rich husband ; but site 
was a nobody, so of course site wanted 
position, and had no doubt read u}) the 
Rajeigh Bulstrodes in the sublime pages 
of Burke. The clear gray eyes grew 
cold as ever, therefore, as Talbot bowed 
to the heiress. Mr. Maldon found his 
partner a chair close to the ])illar against 
which Captain Bulstrode had taken his 
stand, and Mrs. Alexander Floyd swoop- 
ing down upon the Ensign at this very 
moment, with the dire intent of carrying 
him off to dance with a lady who exe- 
cuted more of her steps upon the toes 
of her partner than on the floor of the 
ball-room, Aurora and Talbot were left 
to themselves. 

Captapi Bulstrode glanced downward 


AURORA FLOYD. 


at the banker’s daughter. Ilis gaze 
lingered upon the graceful head, witli its 
coronal of shining scarlet berries, encir- 
cling smooth masses of blue-black hair. 
He expected to see the modest droop- 
ing of the eyelids peculiar to young 
ladies with long lashes, but he was dis- 
appointed ; for Aurora Floyd was look- 
ing straight before her, neither at him, 
nor at the lights, nor the flowers, nor the 
dancers, but far away into vacancy. She 
was so young, prosperous, admired, and 
beloved, that it was difficult to account 
for the dim shadow of trouble that 
clouded her glorious eyes. 

While he was wondering what he 
should say to her, she lifted her eyes to 
his face, and asked him the strangest 
question he had ever heard from girlish 
lips. 

“ Do you know if Thunderbolt won 
the Leger ?” she asked. 

He was too much confounded to an- 
swer for a moment, and she continued 
rather impatiently, “They must have 
heard by six o’clock this evening in Lon- 
don ; but I have asked half-a-dozen 
people here to-night, and no one seems 
to know any thing about it.” 

Talbot’s close-cropped hair seemed 
lifted from his head as he listened .to this 
terrible address. Good heavens I what 
a horrible woman ! The hussar’s vivid 
imagination pictured the heir of all the 
Raleigh Bulstrodes receiving his infan- 
tine impressions from such a mother. She 
would teach him to read out of the Rac- 
ing Calendar ; she would invent a royal 
alphabet of the turf, and tell him that 
“ D stands for Derby, old England’s 
great race,” and “E stands for Epsom, 
a crack meeting-place,” &c. He told 
Miss Floyd that he had never been to 
Doncaster in his life, that he had never 
read a sporting-paper, and that he knew 
no more of Thunderbolt than of King 
Cheops. 

She looked at him rather contemptu- 
ously. “ Cheops wasn’t much,” she said ; 
“but he won the Liverpool Autumn 
Cup in Blink Bonny’s year.” 

Talbot Bulstrode shuddered afresh ; 
but a feeling of pity mingled with his 
liorror. “ If I had a sister,” he thought, 
“ I would get her to talk to this misera- 
ble girl, and bring her to a sense of her 
iniquity.” 

Aurora said no more to the Captain 


39 

of Hussars, but relapsed into the old 
far-away gaze into vacancy, and sat 
twisting a bracelet round and round 
upon her finely-modeled wrist. It was 
a diamond-bracelet, worth a couple of 
hundred pounds, which had been given 
her that day by her father. He would 
have invested all his fortune in Messrs. 
Hunt and Roskell’s cunning handiwork, 
if Aurora had sighed for gems and gew- 
gaws. Miss Floyd’s glance fell upon the 
glittering ornament, and she looked at 
it long and earnestly, rather as if she 
were calculating the value of the stones: 
than admiring the taste of the workman- 
ship. 

Whilst Talbot was watching her, full 
of wondering pity and horror, a young 
man hurried up to the spot where she 
was. seated, and reminded her of an en- 
gagement for the quadrille that was 
forming. She looked at her tablets 
of ivory, gold, and turquoise, and with 
a certain disdainful weariness rose and 
took his arm. Talbot followed her re- 
ceding form. Taller than most among 
the throng, her queenly head was not 
soon lost sight of. 

“ A Cleopatra with a snub nose two 
sizes too small for her face, and a taste 
for horseflesh !” said Talbot Bulstrode, 
ruminating upon the departed divinity. 
“She ought to carry a betting-book in- 
stead of those ivory tablets. How dis- 
trait she was all the time she sat here ! 
I dare say she has made a book for the 
Leger, and was calculating how much 
she stands to lose. What will this poor 
old banker do with her ? put her into a 
madhouse, or get her elected a member 
of the jockey-club ? With her black 
eyes and fifty- thousand pounds, she 
might lead the sporting world. There 
has been a female Pope, why should 
there not be a female ‘Kapoleon of the 
Turf’ ?” 

Later, when the rustling leaves of the 
trees in Beckenham Woods were shiver- 
ing in that cold gray hour which pre- 
cedes the advent, of the dawn, Talbot 
Bulstrode drove his friend away from the 
banker’s lighted mansion. He talked of 
Aurora Floyd during the whole of that 
long cross-country drive. He was mer- 
ciless to her follies; he ridiculed, he 
abused, he sneered at and condemned 
her questionable tastes. He bade Fran- 
cis Louis Maldon marry her at his peril. 


40 


AURORA FLOYD. 


and wivshed him joy of such a wife, lie | 
declared that if he had such a sister lie | 
would shoot her, unless she reformed and | 
burnt her betting-book. He worked | 
liirnself up into a savage humor about 
the young lady’s delinquencies, and talked 
of her as if she had done him an unpar- 
donable injury by entertaining a taste for 
the Turf ; till at last the poor meek 
young ensign plucked up a spirit, and i 
told his superior officer that Aurora 
Floyd was a very jolly girl, and a good 
girl, and a perfect lady, and that if she 
did want to know who won the Leger, 
it was no business of Captain Bulstrode’s, 
and that he, Bulstrode, needn’t make 
such a howling about it. 

While the two men are getting to 
high words about her, Aurora is seated 
in her dressing-room, listening to Lucy 
Floyd’s babble alxiut the ball. 

“There was never such a delightful 
party,” that young lady said ; “and did 
Aurora see so-and-so, and so-and-so ? 
and above all, did she observe Captain 
Bulstrode, who had, served all through 
the Crimean war, and who walked lame, 
and was the son of Sir John Walter 
llaleigh Bulstrode, of Bulstrode Castle, 
near Camelford ?” 

Aurora shook her head with a weary 
gesture. No, she hadn’t noticed any of 
these people. Boor Lucy’s childish talk 
was stop[.)ed in a moment. 

“You are tired, Aurora dear,” she 
said ; “ how cruel I am to worry you ?” 

Aurora threw her arms about her 
‘cousin’s neck, and hid her face upon 
Lucy’s white shoulder. 

“I am tired,” she said, “very, very 
tired.” 

She spoke with such an utterly de- 
spairing wearitiess in her tone, that her 
gentle cousin was alarmed by her words. 

“You are not unhappy, dear Auro- 
ra ?” she asked anxiously. 

“No, no, only tired. There, go, Lucy. ! 
Good-night, good-night.” 

She gently pushed her cousin from ! 
the room, rejected the services of her 
maid, and dismissed her also. Then, 
tired as she was, she removed the candle 
from the dressing-table to a desk on the | 
other side of the room, and seating her- 
self at this desk, unlocked it, and took 
from one of its inmost recesses the soiled 
pencil-scrawl which had been given her 


a week before by the man who tried to 
sell her a dog in Cockspur street. 

The diamond-bracelet, Archibald 
Floyd’s birthday gift to his daughter, 
lay in its nest of satin and velvet upon 
Aurora’s dressing-table. She took the 
morocco-case in her hand, looked for a 
few moments at the jewel, and then shut 
the lid of the little casket with a sharp 
metallic snap. 

“ The tears were in my father’s eyes 
w'hen he clasped the bracelet on iny 
arm,” she said, as she reseated herself 
at the desk. “ If he could see me now !” 

She wrapped the morocco-case in a 
sheet of foolscap, secured the parcel in 
several places with red wax and a plain 
seal, and directed it thus : 

' “J. C., 

Care of Mr. Joseph Green, 

Bell Inn, 

Doncaster.” 

Early the next morning Miss Floyd 
drove her aunt and cousin into Croydon, 
and, leaving them at a Berlin-wool 
shop, went alone to the post-office, where 
she registered and posted this valuable 
parcel. 


CHAPTER lY. 

AFTER THE BALL. 

TtVo days after Aurora’s birthnight 
festival, Talbot Bulstrode’s i>haeton 
dashed once more into the avenue at 
Felden Woods. Again the captain 
made a sacrifice on the shrine of friend- 
ship, and drove Francis Maldon from 
\yindsor to Beckenham, in order that 
the young cornet might make those anx- 
ious inquiries about the health of the 
ladies of Mr. Floyd’s household, which, 
by a pleasant social fiction, are su])i)osed 
to be necessary after an evening of inter- 
mittent waltzes and quadrilles. 

The junior officer was very grateful 
for this kindness ; for Talbot, though 
the best of fellows, was not much given 
to putting himself out of the way for the 
pleasure of other people. It would have 
been far pleasanter to the ca{)tain to 
dawdle away the day in his own rooms, 


AURORA FLOYD. 


41 


lollini^ over those erudite works which 
his brother-officers described by the ge- 
neric title of “ heavy reading,” or, ac- 
cording to the popular belief of those 
hare-brained young men, employed in 
squaring the circle in the solitude of his 
chamber. 

Talbot Bulstrode was altogether an 
inscrutable personage to his comrades 
of the 11th Hussars. His black-letter 
folios, his polished mahogany cases of 
mathematical instruments, his proof-be- 
fore-letters engravings, were the fopper- 
ies of a young 0.xonian rather than an 
officer who had fought and bled at In- 
kermann. The young men who break- 
fasted with him in his rooms trembled 
as they read the titles of the big books 
on the shelves, and stared helplessly at 
the grim saints and angular angels in 
the pre-Raphaelite prints upon the walls. 
They dared not even propose to smoke 
in those sacred chambers, and were 
ashamed of the wet impressions of the 
rims of the Moselle bottles which they 
left upon the mahogany cases. 

It seemed natural to people to be 
afraid of Talbot Bulstrode, just as little 
boys are frightened of a beadle, a police- 
man, and a schoolmaster, even before 
they have been told the attributes of 
these terrible beings. The colonel of 
the lllh Hussars, a portly gentleman, 
who rode lifteen stone, and wrote his 
name high in the Peerage, was fright- 
ened of Talbot. That cold gray eye 
struck a silent awe into the hearts of 
men and women with its stnwght pene- 
trating gaze that always seemed to be 
telling them they were found out. The 
colonel was afraid to tell his best stories 
when Talbot was at the mess-table, for 
he had a dim consciousness that the 
captain was aware of the discrepancies 
in those brilliant anecdotes, though that 
officer had never implied a doubt by 
either look or gesture. The Irish adju- 
tant forgot to brag about his conquests 
amongst the fair sex ; the younger men 
dropped their voices when they talked 
to each other of the side-scenes at Her 
Majesty’s theatre ; and the corks flew 
faster, and the laughter grew louder, 
when Talbot left the room. 

The captain knew that he was more 
resi)ected than beloved, and like all 
proud men who repel the warm feelings 
of others in utter despite of themselves, 


he was grieved and wounded becauser 
his comrades did not become attached 
to him. 

“ Will any body, out of all the mil- 
lions upon this wide earth, ever love 
me?’’ bethought. “No one ever has, 
as yet. Not even my father and mother. 
They have been proud of me ; but they 
have never loved me. How many a 
young profligate has brought his pa- 
rents’ gray hairs with sorrow to the 
grave, and has been beloved with the 
last heart-beat of those he destroyed, as 
I have never been in my life I Perhaps 
my mother would have loved me better, 
if I had given her more trouble ; if I had 
scattered the name of Bulstrode all over 
London upon post-obits and dishonored 
acceptances ; if I had been drummed 
out of my regiment, and had walked 
down to Cornwall without shoes or 
stockings, to fall at her feet, and sob 
out ray sins and sorrows in her lap, and 
ask her to mortgage her jointure for the 
payment of my debts. But 1 have never 
asked any thing of her, dear soul, ex- 
cept her love, and that she has been un- 
able to give me. I suppose it is because 
I do not know how to ask. How often 
I have sat by her side at Bulstrode, 
talking of all sorts of indifferent sal)jects, 
yet with a vague yearning at my heart 
to throw myself upon her breast and im- 
plore of her to love and bless her son ; 
but held aloof by some icy barrier that 
I have been powerless all my life to 
break down. What woman has ever 
loved me ? Not one. They have tried 
To marry me, because I shall be Sir Tal- 
bot Bulstrode of Bulstrode Castle ; but 
how soon they have left off angling for 
the prize, and shrunk away h’ora me 
chilled and disheartened 1 I shudder 
when I remember that I shall be three- 
and-thirty next March, and that I have 
never been beloved. I shall sell out, 
now the fighting is over, for I am no 
use amongst the fellows liere ; and, if 
any good little thing would fall in love 
with me, I would marry her and take 
her down to Bulstrode, to my mother 
and father, and turn country gentle- 
man.” 

Talbot Bulstrode made this declara- 
tion in all sincerity. He wished that 
some good and pure creature would fall 
in love with him, in order that he might 
marry her. He wanted some spontane- 


42 


AURORA FLOYD. 


ous exhibition of innocent feeling wliicli 
might justify liim in saying, “ I am be- 
loved !” He felt little capacity for lov- 
ing, on his own side ; but he thought 
that he would be gratefid to any good 
woman who would regard him with dis- 
interested aifection, and that he would 
devote his life to making her happy. 

“ It would be something to feel that if 
I were smashed in a railway accident, or 
dropped out of a balloon, some one crea- 
ture in this world would think it a lonelier 
place for lack of me. I wonder whether 
my children would love me ? I dare say 
not. I should freeze their young affec- 
tions with the Latin grammar; and they 
would tremble as they passed the door 
of my study, and hush their voices into 
a frightened whisper when papa was 
within hearing.” 

Talbot Bulstrode’s ideal of woman 
was some gentle and feminine creature 
crowned with an aureole of pale auburn 
hair; some timid soul with downcast 
eyes, fringed with golden-tinted lashes; 
some shrinking being, as pale and prim 
as the mediaeval saints in his pre- 
Raphaelite engravings, spotless as her 
own white robes, excelling in all woman- 
ly graces and accomplishments, but only 
exhibiting them in the narrow circle of 
^ a home. 

Perhaps Talbot thought that he had 
met with his ideal when he entered the 
long drawing-room at Felden Woods 
with Cornet Maldon on the seventeenth 
of September 1857. 

Lucy Floyd was standing by an open 
piano, with her wliite dress and pale 
golden hair bathed in a flood of autumn 
sunlight. That sunlit figure came back 
to Talbot’s memory long afterwards, 
after a stormy interval, in which it had 
been blotted away and forgotten, and 
the long drawing-room stretched itself 
out like a picture before his eyes. 

Yes, this was his ideal. This grace- 
ful girl, with the shimmering light for 
ever playing upon her hair, and *the 
modest droop in her white eyelids. But 
undemonstrative as usual, Captain Bul- 
strode seated himself near the piano, 
after the brief ceremony of greeting, and 
contemplated Lucy with grave eyes that 
betrayed no especial admiration. 

He had not taken much notice of 
Lucy Floyd on the night of the ball ; 
indeed, Lucy was scarcely a candle-light 


beauty; her lutir wanted the sunshine 
gleaining through it to light np the 
golden halo about her face, and the 
delicate pink of her checks waxed pale 
in. the glare of the great chandeliers. 

While Captain Bulstrode was watch- 
ing Lucy with that grave contemplating 
gaze, trying to find out whether she was 
in any way different from other girls he 
had known, and whether the ])urity of 
her delicate beauty was more than skin 
deep, the window 0 [)}) 0 site to him was 
darkened, and Aurora Floyd stood be- 
tween him and the sunshine. 

The banker’s daughter paused on the 
threshold of the opeti window, holding 
the collar of an immense mastiff in both 
her hands, and looking irresolutely into 
the room. 

Miss Floyd hated morning callers, 
and she was debating- within herself 
whether she had been seen, or whether 
it might be possible to steal away un- 
perceived. 

But the dog set up a big bark, and 
settled the question. 

“ Quiet, Bow-wow,” she said, “ quiet, 
quiet, boy.” 

Yes, the dog wms called Bow-wow. 
He was twelve years old, and Aurora 
had s© christened him in lier seventh 
year, when he was a blundering, big- 
headed pup})y, that sprawled upon the 
table during the little girl’s lessons, 
upset ink-bottles over her copy-books, 
and ate whole chapters of Binnock’s 
abridged histories. 

The gentlemen rose at the sound of 
her voice, and Miss Floyd came into the 
room and sat down at a little distance 
from the captain and her cousin, twirl- 
ing a straw-hat in her hand and staring 
at her dog, who seated himself resolute- 
ly by her chair, knocking double knocks 
of good temper upon the carpet with 
his big tail. 

Though she said very little, and seated 
herself in a careless attitude that be- 
spoke complete indifference to lier visit- 
ors, Aurora’s beauty extinguished poor 
Lucy, as the rising sun extinguishes the 
stars. 

.. The thfek plaits of her black hair 
made a great diadem upon her low fore- 
head, and crowned her an Eastern em- 
press ; an empress with a doubtful nose, 
it is true, but an empress who reigned 
by right divine of her eyes and hair 


A U R 0 11 A 

For do not tliese wonderful black eyesi, 
which perhaps shine upon us only once 
in a lifetime, in themselves constitute a 
royalty ? 

Talbot Bulstro*de turned away from 
his ideal to look at this dark-haired 
goddess, with a coarse straw hat in her 
hand and a big mastiff’s head lying on 
her lap. Again he perceived that ab- 
straction in her manner which had puz- 
zled him upon the night of the ball. 
She listened to her visitors politely, and 
she answered them when they spoke to 
her; but it seemed to Talbot as if she 
constrained herself to attend to them by 
an effort. 

“ She wishes me away, I dare say,” 
he thought ; “ and no doubt considers 
me a ‘ slow party,’ because I don’t talk 
to her of horses and dogs.” 

The captain resumed his conversation 
with Lucy. He found that she talked 
exactly as he had heard other young 
ladies talk, that she knew all they knew, 
and had been to the places they had 
visited. The ground they went over 
was very old indeed, but Lucy traversed 
it with charming propriety. 

“ She is a good little thing,” Talbot 
thought; “and would make an admira- 
ble wife for a country gentleman. I 
wish she would fall in love with me.” 

Lucy told him of some excursion in 
Switzerland, where she had been during 
tlie preceding autumn with her father 
and mother. 

“ And your cousin,” he asked, “was 
she with you ?” 

“Xo; Aurora was at school in Paris 
with the Demoiselles Lespard.” 

“ Lespard, Lespard !” he repeated ; 
“ a Protestant pension in the Faubourg 
Saint-Germain. Why, a cousin of mine 
is being educated there, a Miss Trevyl- 
lian. She has been there for three or 
four years. Do you remember Con- 
stance Trevyllian at the Demoiselles 
Lespard, Miss Floyd?” said Talbot, 
addressing himself to Aurora. 

“Constance Trevyllian! Yes, I re- 
member her,” answered the banker’s 
daughter. 

She said nothing more, and for a few. 
moments there was rather an awkward 
pause. 

“Miss Trevyllian is my cousin,” said 
the captain. 

“ Indeed !” 


FLOYD. 43 

“I hope that you were very good 
friends.” 

“ Oh, yes.” 

She bent over her dog, caressing his 
big head, and not even looking up as 
she spoke of Miss Trevyllian. It seemed 
as if the subject was utterly indifferent 
to her, and she disdained even to affect 
an interest in it. 

Talbot Bulstrode bit his lip with 
offended pride. “ I suppose this purse- 
proud heiress looks down upon the 
Trevyllians of Tredethlin,” he thought, 
“ because they can boast of nothing 
better than a few hundred acres of bar- 
ren moorland, some exhausted tin- 
mines, and a pedigree that dates from 
the days of King Arthur.” 

Archibald Floyd came into the draw- 
ing-room while the officers were seated 
there, and bade them welcome to Felden 
Woods. 

“ A long drive, gentlemen,” he said ; 
“ your horses will want a rest. Of 
course you will dine with us. We shall 
have a full moon to-night, and you’ll 
have it as light as day for your drive 
back.” 

Talbot looked at Francis Lewis 
Maldon, who was sitting staring at 
Aurora with vacant, open-mouthed ad- 
miration. The young officer knew that 
the heiress and her fifty thousand 
pounds were not for him ; but it was 
scarcely the less pleasant to look at her, 
and wish that like Captain Bulstrode 
he had been the eldest sou of a rich 
baronet. 

The invitation was accepted by Mr. 
Maldon as cordially as it had been 
given, and with less than his usual stiff- 
ness of manner on the part of Talbot. 

The luncheon-bell rang while they 
were talking, and the little party ad- 
journed to the dining-room, where they 
found Mrs. Alexander Floyd sitting at 
the bottom of the table. Talbot sat 
next to Lucy, with Mr. Maldon oppo- 
site to them, while Aurora took her 
place beside her father. 

The old man was attentive to his 
guests, but the shallowest observer could 
have scarcely failed to notice his watch- 
fulness of Aurora. It was ever present 
in his careworn face, that tender, anxious 
glance whicli turned to her at every 
pause in the conversation, and could 
scarcely withdraw itself from her for the 


44 


AURORA FLOYD. 


common courtesies of life. If she spoke, 
he listened, — listened, as if every careless, 
half-disdainful word concealed a deeper 
meaning which it was his task to discern 
and unravel. If she was silent, he 
watched her still more closel}’’, seeking 
perhaps to penetrate that gloomy veil 
which sometimes spread itself over her 
handsome face. 

Talbot Bulstrode was not so absorbed 
by his conversation with Lucy and Mrs. 
Alexander as to overlook this peculiarity 
in the father’s manner towards his only 
child. He saw, too, that when Aurora 
addressed the banker, it was no longer 
with that listless indifference, . half 
weariness, half disdain, which seemed 
natural to her on other occasions. The 
eager watchfulness of Archibald Floyd 
was in some measure reflected in his 
daughter ; by fits and starts, it is true, 
for she generally sank back into that 
moody abstraction which Captain Bul- 
strode had observed on the night of the 
ball ; but still it was there, the same 
feeling as her father’s though less con- 
stant and intense. A watchful, anxious, 
half-sorrowful alFection, which could 
scarcely exist except under abnormal 
circumstances. Talbot Bulstrode was 
vexed to find himself wondering about 
this, and growing every moment less 
and less attentive to Lucy’s simple 
talk. 

“What does it mean ?” he thought; 
“ has she fallen in love with some man 
whom her father has forbidden her to 
marry, and is the old man trying to 
atone for his severity ? That’s scarcely 
likely. A woman with a head and 
throat like hers could scarcely fail to be 
ambitious — ambitious and revengeful, 
rather than over-susceptible of any 
tender passion. Did she lose half her 
fortune upon that race she talked to me 
about ? 1’11‘ ask her presently. Per- 

haps they have taken away her betting- 
book, or lamed her favorite horse, or 
shot some pet dog, to cure him of dis- 
temper. She is a spoiled child, of 
course, this heiress, and I dare say her 
father would try to get a copy of the 
moon made for her, if she cried for that' 
planet.” 

After luncheon, the banker took his 
guests into the gardens that stretched 
far away upon two sides of the house ; 


the gardens w'hich poor Eliza Floyd had 
helped to plan nineteen years before. 

Talbot Bulstrode walked rather stiffly 
from his Crimean wound, but Mrs. 
Alexander and her daughter suited their 
pace to his, while Aurora walked before 
them with her father and Mr. Maldon, 
and with the mastifl’ close at her side. 

“ Your cousin is rather proud, is she 
not ?” Talbot asked Lucy, after they 
had been talking of Aurora. 

“Aurora proud 1 oh, no, indeed : 
perhaps, if she has any fault at all (for 
she is the dearest girl that ever lived), it 
is that she has not sufficient pride ; I 
mean with regard to servants, and that 
sort of people. She would as soon talk 
to one of those gardeners as to you or 
me; and you would see no difference 
in her manner, except that perhaps it 
would be a little more cordial to them 
than to us. The poor people round 
Felden idolise her.” 

“ Aurora takes after her motlier,” said 
Mrs. Alexander ; “ she is the living 
image of poor Eliza Floyd.” 

“Was Mrs. Floyd a countrywoman 
of her husband’s ?” Talbot asked. lie 
was wondering how Aurora came to 
have those great, brilliant, black eyes, 
and so much of the south in her beauty. 

“No; rny uncle’s wife belonged to a 
Lancashire family.” 

A Lancashire family I If Talbot 
Raleigh Bulstrode could have known 
that the family name was Prodder ; 
that one member of the haughty house 
had employed his youth in the pleasing 
occupations of a cabin-boy, making 
thick coffee and toasting greasy herrings 
for the matutinal meal of a surly captain, 
and receiving more corporal correction 
from the sturdy toe of his master’s boot 
than sterling copper coin of the realm I 
If he could have known that the great 
aunt of this disdainful creature, vvalkino* 
before him in all the majesty of her 
beauty, had once kept a chandler’s shop 
in an obscure street in Liverpool, and 
for aught any one but the banker knew, 
kept it still ! But this was a knowledge 
which had wisely been kept even fro'in 
Aurora herself, who knew little, except 
that, despite of having been born with 
that allegorical silver-spoon in her 
mouth, she was poorer than other girls, 
inasmuch as she was motherless. * 


AURORA FLOYD. 


45 


Mrs. Alexander, Lncy, and the cap- 
tain, overtook the others upon a rustic 
bridge, wliere Talbot stopped to rest. 
Aurora was leaning over the rough 
wooden balustrade, looking lazily at the 
water. 

“ Did your favorite win the race, Miss 
Floyd ?” he asked, as he watched the 
effect of her profile against the sunlight : 
not a very beautiful profile certainly, but 
for the long black eyelashes, and the ra- 
diance under them, which their darkest 
shadows could never hide. 

“ Which favorite V she said. 

“ The horse you spoke to me about 
the other night. Thunderbolt ; did he 
win ?” 

“No.’’ 

“ I am very sorry to hear it.” 

Aurora looked up at him, reddening 
angrily. “Why so ?” she asked. 

“ Because I thought you were inter- 
ested in his success.” 

As Talbot said this, he observed, for 
the first time, that Archibald Floyd was 
near enough to overhear their conversa- 
tion, and, furthermore, that he was re- 
garding his daughter with even more 
than his usual watchfulness. 

“ Do not talk to me of racing ; it an- 
noys papa,” Aurora said to the captain, 
dropping her voice. Talbot bowed. “I 
was right, then,” he thought ; “the turf 
is the skeleton. I dare say Miss Floyd 
has been doing her best to drag her fa- 
ther’s name into the Gazette, and yet he 
evidently loves her to distraction ; while 

I ” There was something so very 

Pharisaical in the speech, that Captain 
Bulstrode would not even finish it men- 
tally. lie was thinking, “ This girl, 
who, perhaps, has been the cause of 
nights of sleepless anxiety and days of 
devouring care, is tenderly beloved by 
her father; while I, who am a model to 
all the elder sons of England, have never 
been loved in my life,” 

At half-past six the great bell* at Fel- 
den Woods rang a clamorous peal that 
went shivering above the trees, to tell 
the country-side that the family were 
going to dress for dinner; and another 
peal at seven, to tell the villagers round 
Beckenham and West Wickham that 
Maister Floyd and his household were 
going to dine ; but not altogether an 
empty or discordant peal, for it told the 
hungry poor of broken victuals and rich 


and delicate meats to be had almost for 
asking in the servants’ offices ; — shreds 
of fricandeaux and ])atches of dainty 
preparations, quarters of chickens and 
carcasses of pheasants, which would 
have gone to fatten the pigs for Christ- 
mas, but for Archibald Floyd’s strict 
commands that all should be given to 
those who chose to come for it, 

Mr. Floyd and his visitors did not 
leave the gardens till after the ladies 
had retired to dress. The dinner-party 
was very animated, for Alexander Floyd 
drove down from the City to join his 
wife and daughter, bringing with him 
the noisy boy who was just going to 
Eton, and who was passionately attached 
to his cousin Aurora ; and whether it 
was owing to the influence of this young 
gentleman, or to that fitfulness which 
seemed a part of her nature, Talbot Bul- 
strode could not discover; but certain 
it was that the dark cloud melted away 
from Miss Floyd’s face, and she aban- 
doned herself to the joyousness of the 
hour wdth a radiant grace, that reminded 
her father of the night when Eliza Ber- 
cival played Lady Teazle for the last 
time, and took her far.ewell of the stage 
in the little Lancashire theatre. 

It needed but this change in his 
daughter to make Archibald Floyd thor- 
oughly happy. Aurora’s smiles seemed 
to shed a revivifying influence upon the 
whole circle. The ice melted away, for 
the sun had broken out, and the winter 
was gone at last. Talbot Bulstrode be- 
wildered his brain by trying to discover 
why it was that this woman was such a 
peerless and fascinating creature. Why 
it was that, argue as he would against 
the fact, he was nevertheless allowing 
himself to be bewitched by this black- 
eyed syren ; freely drinking of that cup 
of bhang which she presented to him, 
and rapidly becoming intoxicated. 

“I could almost fall in love with my 
fair-haired ideal,” he thought, “but I 
cannot help admiring this extraordinary 
girl. She is like Mrs. Nisbett in her 
zenith of fame and beauty; she is like 
Cleopatra sailing down the Cydnus ; she 
is like Nell Gwynne selling oranges ; she 
is like Lola Montes giving battle to the 
Bavarian students ; she is like Charlotte 
Corday with the knife in her hand, stand- 
ing behind the friend of the people in 
his bath ; she is like every thing that is 


46 


AURORA FLOYD. 


beautiful, and strange, and wicked, and 
unwomanly, and bewitching ; and she is 
just the sort of creature that many a 
fool would ftill in love with.” 

lie put the length of the room be- 
tween himself and the enchantress, and 
took his seat by the grand-piano, at 
which Lucy Floyd was playing slow 
harmonious symphonies of Beethoven. 
The drawing-room at Felden Woods 
was so long, that, seated by this piano. 
Captain Bnlstrode seemed to look back 
at the merry group about the heiress as 
he might have looked at a scene on the 
stage from the back of the boxes. He 
almost wished for an opera-glass as he 
watched Aurora’s graceful gestures and 
the play of her sparkling eyes ; and then 
turning to the piano, he listened to the 
drowsy music, and contemplated Lucy’s 
face, marvellously fair in the light of 
that full moon of which Archibald Floyd 
had spoken, the glory of which, stream- 
ing in from an open window, put out 
the dim wax-candles on the piano. 

All that Aurora’s beauty most lacked 
was richly possessed by Lucy. Delicacy 
of outline, perfection of feature, purity 
of tint, all were Hiere ; but while one 
face dazzled you by its shining splendor, 
the other impressed you only with a 
feeble sense of its charms, slow to come 
and quick to pass away. There are so 
many Lucy’s, but so few Aurora’s ; and 
while you never could be critical with 
the one, you were merciless in your scru- 
tiny of the other. Talbot Bnlstrode 
was attracted to Lucy by a vague notion 
that she was just the good and timid 
creature who was destined to make him 
happy; but he looked at her as calmly 
as if she had been a statue, and was as 
fully aware of her defects as a sculptor 
who criticises the worjk of a rival. 

But she was exactly the sort of woman 
to make a good wife. She had been edu- 
cated to that end by a careful mother. 
Purity and goodness had watched over 
her and hemmed her in from her cradle. 
She had never seen unseemly sights^ or 
heard unseemly sounds. She was as 
ignorant as a baby of all the vices and 
horrors of this big world. She was 
ladylike, accomplished, well-informed ; 
and if there were a great many others 
of precisely the same type of graceful 
womanhood, it was certainly the highest 
type, and the holiest, and the best. 


Later in the evening, when Captain 
Bulstrode’s phaeton was brought round 
to the flight of steps in front of the great 
doors, the little party assembled on the 
terrace to see tlie two officers depart, 
and the banker told his guests how he 
hoped this visit to Felden would be the 
beginning of a lasting acquaintance. 

“ I am going to take Aurora and my 
niece to Brighton for a month or so,” 
he said, as he shook hands with the 
captain; “but on our return you must 
let us see you as often as possible.” 

Talbot bowed, and stammered his 
thanks for the banker’s cordiality. Au- 
rora and her cousin Percy Floyd, the 
young -Ftonian, had gone down the 
steps, and were admiring Captain Bul- 
strode’s thorough-bred bays, and the 
cai)tain was not a little distracted by 
the picture the group made in the moon- 
light. 

He never forgot that picture. Au- 
rora, with her coronet of plaits dead 
black against the puiqile air, and her silk 
dress shimmering in the uncertain light, 
the delicate head of the bay horse visible 
above her shoulder, and her ringed white 
hands caressing tlie animal’s slender ears, 
while the purblind old mastiff, vaguely 
jealous, whined complainingly at her 
side. 

How marvellous is the sympathy which 
exists between some people and the brute 
creation ! I think that horses and 
dogs understood every word that Aurora 
said to them, — that they worshipped her 
from the dim depths of their inarticulate 
souls, and would have willingly gone to 
death to do her service. Talbot- ob- 
served all this with an uneasy sense of 
bewilderment. 

“I wonder whether these creatures 
are wiser than we ?” he thought ; “ do 
they recognize some higher attributes in 
this girl than we can perceive, and 
worship their, sublime presence? If 
this terrible woman, with her unfeminine 
tastes and mysterious propensities, were 
mean, or cowardly, or false, or impure, 
I do not think that mastiff would love 
her as he does ; I do not think my 
thorough-breds would let her hands 
meddle with their bridles : the dog 
would snarl, and the horses would bite, 
as such animals used to do in those 
remote old days when they recognized 
witchcraft and evil spirits, and were 


AURORA FLOYD. 


47 


convulsed by the presence of the un- 
canny. I dare say this Miss Floyd is a 
good, generous-hearted creature, — the 
sort of person fast men would call a 
glorious girl, — but as well read in the 
Racing Calendar and Ruff's Guide as 
other ladies in Miss Yonge’s novel's. 
I’m really sorry for her.” 


CHAPTER Y. 

JOHN MELLISII. 

The house which the banker hired at 
Brighton for the month of October 
was perched high up on the East Cliif, 
towering loftily above the wind-driven 
waves ; tlie rugged coast of Dieppe was 
dimly visible from the upper windows in 
the clear autumn mornings, and the 
Chain Pkir looked like a strip of ribbon 
below the cliff. A pleasanter situation 
to my mind than those level terraces 
towards the west, from the windows of 
which the sea appears of small extent, 
and the horizon within half a mile or so 
of the Parade. 

Before Mr. Floyd took his daughter 
and her cousin to Brighton, he entered 
into an arrangement which he thought, 
no doubt, a very great evidence of his 
wisdom ; this was the engagement of a 
lady, who was to be a compound gov- 
erness, companion, and chaperon to 
Aurora, who, as her aunt said, was 
sadly in need of some accomplished and 
watchful person, whose care it would be 
to train and prune those exuberant 
branches of her nature which had been 
suffered to grow as they would from her 
infancy. The beautiful shrub was no 
longer to trail its wild stems along the 
ground, or shoot upward to the blue 
skies at its own sweet will ; it was to be 
trimmed and clipped and fastened primly 
to the stony wall of society with cruel 
nails and galling strips of cloth. In 
other words, an advertisement was in- 
serted in the Times newspaper, setting 
forth that a lady, by birth and education, 
was required as finishing governess and 
companion in the household of a gentle- 
man, to whom salary was no object, 
provided the aforesaid lady was perfect 
mistress of all the accomplishments 


under th*e sun, and was altogether such 
an exceptional and extraordinary being 
as could only exist in the advertising 
columns of a popular journal. 

But if the world had been filled with 
exceptional beings, Mr. Floyd could 
scarcely have received more answers 
to his advertisement than came pelt- 
ing in upon the unhappy little post- 
master at Beckenham. The man had 
serious thoughts of hiring a cart, in 
which to convey the letters to Felden. 
If the banker had advertised for a wife, 
and had stated the amount of his income, 
he could scarcely have had more answers. 
It seemed as if the female population 
of London, with one accord, was seized 
with the desire to improve the mind and 
form the manners of the daughter of the 
gentleman to whom terms were no 
object. Officers’ widows, clergymen’s 
widows, lawyers’ and merchants’ widows, 
daughters of gentlemen of high family 
but reduced means, orphan daughters 
of all sorts of noble and distinguished 
people, — declared themselves each and 
every one to be the person who, out of 
all living creatures upon this earth, was 
best adapted for the post. Mrs. Alex- 
ander Floyd selected six letters, threw 
\lie rest into the waste-paper basket, 
ordered the banker’s carriage, and drove 
into town to see the six writers thereof. 
She was a practical and energetic 
woman, and she put the six applicants 
through their facings so severely, that 
when she returned to Mr. Floyd it was 
to announce that only one of them was 
good for any thing, and that she was 
coming down to Felden Woods the 
next day. 

The chosen lady was the widow of an 
ensign who had died within six months 
of his marriage, and about an hour and 
a half before he would have succeeded 
to some enormous property, the particu- 
lars of which were never rightly under- 
stood by the friends of his unfortunate 
relict. But vague as the story might be, 
it was quite clear enough to establish 
Mrs. Walter Powell in life as a disap- 
pointed woman. She was a woman with 
straight light hair, and a lady-like droop 
of the head. A woman who had left 
school to marry, and after six months’ 
wedded life had gone back to the same 
school as instructress of the junior pu- 
pils. A woman whose whole existence 


48 


AURORA- FLOYD. 


had been spent in teachinj^ an‘d beino^ 
taught ; who had exercised in lier ear- 
lier years a species of hand-to-mouth 
tuition, teaching in the morning that 
which she learnt over night ; who had 
never lost an opportunity of improving 
herself; who had grown mechanically 
prolicient as a musician and an artist, 
who had a certain parrot-like skill in 
foreign languages, who had read all the 
books incumbent upon her to read, and 
who knew all the things imperative for 
her to know, and who, beyond all this, 
and outside the boundary of the 'School- 
room wall, was ignorant and soulless and 
low-minded and vulgar. Aurora swal- 
lowed the bitter pill as best she might, 
and accepted Mrs. Powell as the person 
chartered for her improvement a kind 
of ballast to be flung into the wandering 
bark, to steady its erratic course and 
keep it olf rocks and quicksands. 

“1 must put up with her, Lucy, I sup- 
pose,” she said ; “and I must consent to 
be improved and formed by the poor 
faded creature. I wonder whether she 
will be like Miss Drummond, who used 
to let me off from my lessons and read 
novels while I ran wild in the gardens 
and stables. I can put up with her, 
Lucy, as long as I have you with me ; 
but 1 think I should go mad, if I were 
to be chained up alone with that grim, 
pale-faced watch dog.” 

Mr, Floyd and his family drove from 
Felden to Brighton in the banker’s roomy 
travelling-carriage, with Aurora’s maid 
in the rumble, a pile of imperials upon 
the roof, and Mrs. Powell with her young 
charges, in the interior of the vehicle. 
Mrs. Alexander had gone back to Ful- 
ham, having done her duty, as she con- 
sidered, in securing a protectress for 
Aurora ; but Lucy was to stay with her 
cousin at Brighton, and to ride with her 
on the downs. The saddle-horses had 
gone down the day before with Aurora’s 
groom, a gray-haired and rather surly 
old fellow who had served Archibald 
Floyd for thirty years; and the mastiff 
called Bow-wow travelled in the carriage 
with his mistress. 

About a week after the arrival at 
Brighton, Aurora and her cousin were 
walking together on the West Cliff, 
when a gentleman with a stiff leg rose 
from a bench upon which he had been 
seated listening to the band, and slowly 


advanced to them. Lucy dropped her 
eyelids with a faint blush; but Aurora 
held out her hand in answer to Captain 
Bulstrode’s salute. 

“ I thought I should be sure to meet 
you down here. Miss Floyd,” he said. 
“I only came this morning, and I was 
going to call at Folthorpe’s for your 
papa’s address. Is he quite well ?” 

“Quite — yes, that is — pretty well.” 
A shadow stole over her face as she 
spoke. It was a wonderful face for fitful 
lights and shades. “ But we did not 
expect to see you at Brighton, Captain 
Bulstrode ; we thought your regiment 
was still quartered at Windsor.” 

“ Yes, my regiment — that is, the Elev- 
enth is still at Windsor; but I have sold 
out.” 

“ Sold out I” Both Aurora and her 
cousin opened their eyes at this intelli- 
gence. 

“ Yes ; I was tired of the array. It’s 
dull work now the fighting is all over. 

I might have exchanged and gone to 
India, certainly,” he added, as if in an- 
swer to some argument of his own ; “but 
I’m getting middle-aged, and I am tired 
of roaming about the world.” 

“I should like to go to India,” said 
Aurora, looking seaward as she spoke. 

“You, Auroral but why?” exclaimed 
Lucy. 

“ Because I hate England.” 

“ I thought it was France you dis- 
liked.” 

“ I hate them both. What is the use 
of this big world, if we are to stop for 
ever in one place, chained to one set of 
ideas, fettered to one narrow circle of 
people, seeing and hearing of the persons 
we hate for ever and ever, and u)uible to 
get away from the odious sound of their 
names? I should like to turn female 
missionary, and go to the centre of Africa 
with Dr. Livingstone and his family ; 
and I would go if it wasn’t for papa.” 

Poor Lucy stared at her cousin in 
helpless amazement. Talbot Bulstrode 
found himself falling back into that state 
of bewilderment in which this girl always 
threw him. What did she mean, this 
heiress of nineteen years of age, by her 
fits of despondency and outbursts of bit- 
terness ? Was it not perhaps, after all, 
only an affectation of singularity ? 

Aurora looked at him with her bright- 
est smile while he was asking himself 


AURORA FLOYD. 


49 


tills question. “You will come and see 
papa,” she said. 

Captain Bulstrode declared that he 
desired no greater happiness than to 
pay his respects to Mr. Floyd, in token 
whereof he walked with the young ladies 
towards the East Cliff. 

From that morning, the officer became 
a constant visitor at the banker’s. He 
played chess with Lucy, accompanied 
her on the piano when she sang, assisted 
her with valuable hints when she painted 
in water-colors, put in lights here, and 
glimpses of sky there, deepened autumnal 
browns, and intensified horizon purples, 
and made himself altogether useful to the 
young lady, who was, as we know, ac- 
complished in all lady-like arts. Mrs. 
Powell, seated in one of the windows of 
the pleasant drawing-room, shed the be- 
nignant light of her faded countenance 
and pale-blue eyes upon the two young 
people, and represented all the proprie- 
ties in her own person; Aurora, when 
the weather prevented her riding, occu- 
pied herself more restlessly than profita- 
bly by taking up books and tossing them 
down, pulling Bow-wow’s ears, staring 
out of the windows, drawing caricatures 
of the proraenaders on the cliff, and drag- 
ging out a wonderful little watch, with a 
bunch of dangling inexplicable golden 
absurdities, to see what o’clock it was. 

Talbot Bulstrode, while leaning over 
Lucy’s piano or drawing-board, or pon- 
dering about the next move of his queen, 
had ample leisure to watch the inove- 
ments of Miss Floyd, and to be shocked 
at the purposeless manner in which that 
young lady spent the rainy mornings. 
Sometimes he saw her poring over 
BelVs Life, much to the horror of Mrs. 
Walter Powell, who had a vagne idea 
of the iniquitous proceedings recited in 
that terrible journal, but who was afraid 
to stretch her authority so far as to 
forbid its perusal. 

Mrs. Powell looked with silent appro- 
bation upon the growing familiarity 
between gentle Lucy Floyd and the 
captain. She had feared at first that 
Talbot was an admirer of Aurora’s ; but 
the manner of the two soon dispelled 
her alarm. Nothing could be more 
cordial than Miss Floyd’s treatment of 
the officer ; but she displayed the same 
indifference to him that she did to every 
thing else except her dog and her 
3 


i father. Was it possible that well-nigh 
perfect face and those haughty graces 
had no charms for the banker’s daugh- 
ter ? Could it be that she could spend 
hour after hour in the society of the 
handsomest and most aristocratic man 
she had ever met, and yet be as heart- 
w'hole as when the acquaintance began ? 
There was one person in the little party 
who. was for ever asking that question, 
and never able to answer it to her own 
satisfaction, and that person was Lucy 
Floyd. Poor Lucy Floyd, who was 
.engaged,- night and day, in mentally 
playing that old German game which 
Faust and Margaret played together 
with the full-blown rose in the garden, — 
“ He loves me — loves me not !” 

Mrs. Walter Powell’s shallow-sighted 
blue eyes might behold in Lucy, Captain 
Bulstrode’s attraction to the East Cliff ; 
but Lucy herself knew better — bitterly, 
cruelly better. 

“ Captain Bulstrode’s attentions to 
Miss Lucy Floyd were most evident,’’ 
Mrs. Powell said one day when the 
captain left, after a long morning’s 
music and singing and chess. How 
Lucy hated the prim phrase I None 
knew so well as she the value of those* 
“ attentions.” They had been at Brigh- 
ton six weeks, and for the last five the 
captain had been with them nearly every 
morning. He had ridden with them on 
the downs, and driven with them to the 
Dyke, and lounged beside them listening 
to the band, and stood behind them in 
their box at the pretty little theatre, and 
crushed with them into the Pavilion to 
hear Grisi and Mario, and Alboni and 
poor Bosio. He had attended them 
through the whole round of Brighton 
amusements, and had never seemed 
weary of their companionship. But for 
all tills, Lucy knew what the last leaf 
upon the rose would tell her, when the 
many petals should be plucked away, 
and the poor stem be left bare. She 
knew how often he forgot to turn over 
the leaf in the Beethoven sonatas, how 
often he puts streaks of green into an 
horizon tliat should have been purple, 
and touched up the trees in her fore- 
ground with rose-pink, and suffered 
himself to be ignominiously checkmated 
from sheer inattention, and gave her 
wandering, random answers when she 
spoke to him. She knew how restless 




50 


AUKORA FLOYD. 


he was when Aurora read BeWs Life, ! 
(Mid liow the very crackle of the news- 
paper made him wince with nervous 
])ain. She knew how tender he was of 
the purblind mastiff, how ea<rer to be 
friends with him, how almost sycophan- 
tic in his attentions to the big, stately 
animal. Lucy knew, in short, that 
which Talbot as yet did not know him- 
self : she knew that he was fast falling 
head over heels in love with her cousin, 
and she had at the same time a vague 
idea that he would much rather have 
fallen in love with herself, and that he 
was blindly struggling with the growing 
passion. 

It was so ; he was falling in love w'ith 
Aurora. The more he protested against 
her, the more determinedly he exagger- 
ated her follies, and argued with him- 
self upon the folly of loving her, so 
much the more surely did he love her. 
The very battle he was fighting kept 
lier forever in his mind, until he grew 
the veriest slave of the lovely vision, 
which he only evoked in order to en- 
deavor to exorcise. 

“ How could be take her down to 
Bulstrode, and introduce her to his 
father and mother he- thought ; and 
at the thought she appeared to him 
illuminating the old Cornish mansion by 
the radiance of her beauty, fascinating 
his father, bewitching his mother, riding 
across the moorland on her thorough- 
bred mare, and driving all the parish 
mad with admiration of her. 

He felt that his visits to Mr. Floyd’s 
house were fast compromising him in 
the eyes of its inmates. Sometimes he 
felt himself bound in honor to make 
Lucy an offer of his hand ; sometimes 
he argued that no one had any right to 
consider his attentions more particular 
to one than to the other of the young i 
ladies. If he had known of that weary 
game which Lucy was for ever mentally 
playing with the imaginary rose, I am 
sure he would not have lost an hour in 
j)roposing to her ; but Mrs. Alexander’s 
daughter had been far too well educated I 
to betray one emotion of her heart, and 
she bore her girlish agonies, and con- 
cealed her hourly tortures, with the 
quiet patience common to these simple 
womanly martyrs. She knew that the 
last leaf must soon be plucked, and the 


sweet pain of uncertainty be for ever 
ended. 

Heaven knows how long Talbot Bul- 
strode might have done battle with his 
growing passion, had it not been for an 
event which put an end' to his indecision 
and made him desperate. This event 
was the appearance of a rival. 

He was walking with Aurora and 
Lucy upon the West Cliff one afternoon 
in November, when a mail-phaeton a?id 
pair suddenly drew up against the rail- 
ings that separated them from the road, 
and a big man, with huge masses of 
Scotch plaid twisted about his waist 
and shoulders, sprang out of the vehicle, 
splashing the mud upon his legs, and 
rushed up to Talbot, taking off Ids hat 
as he approached, and bowing apolo- 
getically to the ladies. 

“ Why, Bulstrode,” he said, “ who on 
earth would have thought of seeing you 
here? I heard you were in India, man ; 
but what have you done to your leg?” 

He was so breathless with hurry and 
excitement, that he was utterly indif- 
ferent to punctuation ; and it seemed as 
much as he could do to keep silence 
while Talbot introduced him to the la- 
dies as Mr. Mellish, an old friend and 
school-fellow. The stranger stared with 
such open-mouthed admiration at Miss 
Floyd’s black eyes, that the captain 
turned round upon him ahnost savagely, 
as he asked what had brought him to 
Brighton. 

“ The hunting season, my boy. Tired 
of Yorkshire; know every field, ditch, 
hedge, pond, sunk fence, and scrap of 
timber in the three Hidings. I’m stay- 
ing at the Bedford; I’ve got my stud., 
with me — give you a mount to-morrow 
morning if you like. Harriers meet at 
eleven — Dyke Road. I’ve a gray that’ll 
I suit you to a nicety — carry my weight, 
and as easy to sit as your arm-chair.” 

Talbot hated his friend for talking of 
horses ; he felt a jealous terror of him. 
This, perhaps, was the sort of man 
whose society would be agreeable to 
I Aurora — this big, empty-headed York- 
shireman, with his babble about his stud 
and hunting appointments. But turn- 
ing shar[)ly round to scrutinise Miss 
Floyd, he was gratified to find that 
young lady looking vacantly at the 
[ gathering mists upon the sea, and appa- 


AURORA FLOYD. 


51 


rently nnconscions of tlie existence of 
Mr. John Mellish, of Mellish Park, 
Yorkshire. 

This John Mellish was, as I have 
said, a big man, looking even bigger 
than he was by reasc^ft of about eight 
yards’ length of thick shepherd’s plaid 
twisted scientifically about his shoulders. 
He was a man of thirty years of age at 
least, but having withal such a boyish 
exuberance in his manner, such a youth- 
ful and innocent joyousness in his face, 
that he might have been a youngster of 
eighteen just let loose from some public 
academy of the muscular Christianity 
school. I think the Rev. Charles 
Kingsley would have delighted in this 
big, hearty, broad-chested young Eng- 
lishman, with brown hair brushed away 
from an open forehead, and a thick 
brown moustache bordering a mouth 
for ever ready to expand into a laugh. 
Such a laugh', tool such a hearty and 
sonorous peal, that the people on the 
Parade turned round to look at the 
owner of those sturdy lungs, and smiled 
good-naturedly for very sympathy with 
bi's honest merriment. 

Talbot Bulstrode would have given a 
hundred pounds to get rid of the noisy 
Yorkshireraan. What business had he 
at Brignton ? Wasn’t the biggest coun- 
ty in England big enough to hold him, 
that he must needs* bring his north- 
country bluster to Sussex, for the annoy- 
ance of Talbot’s friends? 

Captain Bulstrode was not any better 
pleased when, strolling a little further 
on, the party met with Archibald Ployd, 
who had come out to look for his 
daughter. The old man begged to be 
introduced to Mr. Mellish, and invited 
the honest Yorkshireman to dine at the 
East Cliff that very evening, much to 
the aggravation of Talbot, who fell 
sulkily back, and allowed John to make 
the acquaintance of the ladies. The 
familiar brute ingratiated himself into 
their good graces in about ten minutes, 
and by the time they reached the bank- 
er’s house was more at his ease with 
Aurora than the heir of Bulstrode after 
two months’ acquaintance. He accom- 
panied them to the door-step, shook 
hands with the ladies and Mr. Floyd, 
patted the mastiff Bow-wow, gave Tal- 
bot a playful sledge-hammer-like slap 
upon the shoulder, and ran back to the 


Bedford to dress for dinner. His spirits 
were so high that he knocked over little 
boys and tumble'd against fashionable 
young men, who drew themselves up in 
stiff amazement as the big fellow dashed 
past them. He sang a scrap of a hunt- 
ing-song as he ran up the great staircase 
to his eyrie at the Bedford, and chat- 
tered to his valet as he dressed. He 
seemed a creature especially created to 
be prosperous; to be the owner and 
dispenser of wealth, the distributor of 
good things. People who were strangers 
to him ran after and served him on 
speculation, knowing instinctively that 
they would get ample reward for their 
trouble. Waiters in a coffee-room de- 
serted other tables to attend upon that 
at which he was seated. Box-keepers 
would leave parties of six shivering in 
the dreary corridors while they found 
a seat for John Mellish. Mendicants 
picked him out from the crowd in a 
busy thoroughfare, and hung about him, 
and would not be driven away without 
a dole from the pocket of his roomy 
waistcoat. He was always spending his 
money for the convenience of other 
people. He had an army of old ser- 
vants at Mellish Park, who adored him 
and tyrannised over him after the man- 
ner of their kind. His stables were 
crowded with horses that were lame, or 
wall-eyed, or otherwise disqualified for 
service, but that lived on his bounty 
like a set of jolly equine paupers, and 
consumed as much corn as would have 
supplied a racing stud. He was per- 
petually paying for things he neither 
ordered nor had, and was for ever being 
cheated by the dear honest creatures 
about him, who, for all they did their 
best to ruin him, would have gone 
through typical fire and water to serve 
him, and would have clung to him, and 
worked for him, and supported him out 
of those very savings for which they had 
robbed him, when the ruin came. If 
“ Muster John” had a headache, every 
creature in that disorderly household 
was unhappy and uneasy till the ail- 
ment was cured ; every lad in the sta- 
bles, every servant-maid in the house, 
was eager that his or her remedy 
should be tried for his restoration. If 
you had said at Mellish Park that 
John’s fair face and broad shoulders 
were not the highest forms of manly 


AURORA FLOYD. 


52 

beauty and grace, you would have 
been set down as a creature devoid of 
all taste or judgment. ' To the mind of 
that household, John Hellish, in “ pink” 
clothes and pipe-clayed tops, was more 
beautiful than the Apollo Belvidere, 
whose bronze image in little adorned a 
niche in the hall. If you had told them 
that fourteen-stone weight was not in- 
dispensable to manly perfection, or that 
it was possible there were more lofty ac- 
complishments than driving unicorns or 
shooting forty-seven head of game in a 
morning, or pulling the bay-mare’s 
shoulder into joint that time she got a 
sprain in the hunting-field, or vanquish- 
ing Joe Millings, the past Riding 
smasher, without so much as losing 
breath, — those simple-hearted Yorkshire 
servants would have fairly laughed in 
your face. Talbot Bulstrode complained 
that every body respected him, and no- 
body loved him. John Hellish might 
have uttered the reverse of this com- 
plaint, had he been so minded. Who 
could help loving the honest, generous 
squire, whose house and purse were open 
to all the country-side ? Who could 
feel any chilling amount of respect for 
the friendly and familiar master who sat 
upon the table in the big kitchen at Hel- 
lish Park, with his dogs and servants 
round him, and gave them the history 
of the day’s adventures in the hunting- 
field, till the old blind foxhound at his 
feet lifted his big head and set up a 
feeble music ? No, John Hellish was 
well content to be beloved, and never 
questioned the quality of the affection 
bestowed upon him. To him it was all 
the purest virgin gold ; and you might 
have talked to him for twelve hours at a 
sitting without convincing him that men 
and women were vile and mercenary 
creatures, and that if his servants, and 
his tenantry, and the poor about his 
estate, loved him, it was for the sake of 
the temporal benefits they received of 
him. He was as unsuspicious as a child, 
who believes that the fairies in a panto- 
mime are fairies for ever and ever, and 
that the harlequin is born in patches and 
a mask. He was as open to flattery as 
a school-girl who distributes the con- 
tents of her hamper among a circle of 
toadies. When people told him he was 
a fine fellow, he believed them, and 
agreed with them, and thought that the 


world was altogether a hearty, honest 
place, and that every body was a fine 
fellow. Never having an arriere pen- 
see himself, he looked for none in the 
words of other people, but thought that 
every one blurted out their real opin- 
ions, and offended or pleased their fel- 
lows, as frankly and blunderingly as 
himself. If he had been a vicious young 
man, he would no doubt have gone alto- 
gether to the bad, and fallen among 
thieves. But being blest with a nature 
that was inherently pure and innocent, 
his greatest follies were no worse than 
those of a big school-boy who errs from 
very exuberance of spirit. He had lost 
his mother in the first year of his in- 
fancy, and his father had died some time 
before his majority; so there had been 
none to restrain his actions, and it was 
something at thirty years of age to be 
able to look back upon a stainless boy- 
hood and youth, which might have been 
befouled with the slime of the gutters, 
and infected with the odor of villainous 
haunts. Had he not reason to be proud 
of this ? 

Is there any thing, after all, so grand 
as a pure and unsullied life — a fair pic- 
ture, with no ugly shadows lurking in 
the background — a smooth poem, with 
no crooked, halting line to mar the verse 
— a noble book, with no unholy page — 
a simple story, sutfii as our children may 
read ? Can any greatness be greater ? 
can any nobility be more truly noble ? 
When a whole nation mourned with one 
voice but a few weeks since ; when we 
drew down our blinds and shut out the 
dull light of the December day, and lis- 
tened sadly to the far booming of the 
guns ; when the poorest put aside their 
work-a-day troubles to weep for a wid- 
owed Queen and orphaned children in a 
desolate palace ; when rough omnibus- 
drivers forgot to blaspheme at each 
other, and tied decent scraps of crape 
upon their whips, and went sorrowfully 
about their common business, thinking 
of that great sorrow at Windsor, — the 
words that rose simultaneously to every 
lip dwelt most upon the spotless charac- 
ter of him who was lost ; the tender hus- 
band, the watchful father, the kindly 
master, the liberal patron, the temper- 
ate adviser, the stainless gentleman. 

It is many years since England 
mourned for another royal personage 


AURORA FLOYD. 


53 


wlio was called a “ gentleman.” A gen- 
tleman who played practical jokes, and 
held infamous orgies, a!id persecuted a 
wretched foreign woman, whose chief 
sin and misfortune it was to be his wife; 
a gentleman who cut out his own nether 
garments, and left the companion of his 
gayest revels, the genius whose bright- 
ness had flung a spurious lustre upon 
the dreary saturnalia of vice, to die des- 
titute and despairing. Surely there is 
some hope that we have changed for the 
better within the last thirty years, inas- 
much as we attach a new meaning to- 
day to this simple title of “ gentleman.” 
I take some pride, therefore, in the two 
young men of whom I write, for the 
simple reason that I have no dark 
patches to gloss over in the history of 
either of them. I may fail in making 
you like them ; but I can promise that 
you shall have no cause to be ashamed 
of them. Talbot Bulstrode may offend 
you with his sulky pride, John Mellish 
may simply impress you as a blundering 
countryfied ignoramus ; but neither of 
them shall ever shock you by an ugly 
word or an unholy thought. 


CHAPTER YI. 

REJECTED AND ACCEPTED. 

The dinner-party at Mr. Floyd’s was 
a very merry one; and when John Mel- 
lish and Talbot Bulstrode left the East 
Cliff to walk westward, at eleven o’clock 
at night, the Yorkshireman told his 
friend that he had never enjoyed him- 
self so much in his life. This declara- 
tion must, however, be taken with some 
reserve; for it was one which John was 
in the habit of making about three times 
a week : but he really had been very 
happy in the society of the banker’s 
family ; and, what was more, he was 
ready to adore Aurora Floyd without 
any further preparation whatever. 

A few bright smiles, and sparkling 
glances, a little animated conversation 
about the hunting-field and the race- 
course, combined with a few glasses of 
those effervescent wines which Archibald 
Floyd imported from the fair Moselle 
country, had been .quite enough to turn 


the head of John Mellish, and to cause 
him to hold wildly forth in the moon- 
light upon the merits of the beautiful 
heiress. 

“ I verily believe I shall die a bache- 
lor, Talbot,” he said, “unless I can get 
that girl to marry me. I’ve only known 
her half-a-dozen hours, and I’m head- 
over-heels in love with her already. 
What is it that has knocked me over 
like this, Bulstrode ? I’ve seen other 
girls with black eyes and hair, and she 
knows no more of horses than half the 
women in Yorkshire; so it isn’t that. 
What is it, then, hey ?” 

He came to a full stop against a lamp- 
post, and stared fiercely at his friend as 
he asked this question. 

Talbot gnashed his teeth in silence. 

It was no use battling with his fate, 
then, he thought ; the fascination of this 
woman had the same effect upon others 
as upon himself ; and while he was argu- 
ing with, and protesting against, his 
passion, some brainless fellow, like this 
Mellish, would step in and win the prize. 

He wished his friend good-night upon 
the steps of the Old Ship Hotel, and 
walked straight to his room, where he 
sat with his window open to the mild 
November night, staring out at the moon- 
lit sea. He determined to propose to 
Aurora Floyd before twelve o’clock the 
next day. 

Why should he hesitate ? 

He had asked himself that qu'estion a 
hundred times before, and had always 
been unable to answer it ; and yet he 
had hesitated. He could not dispossess 
himself of a vague idea that there was 
some mystery in this girl’s life ; some 
secret known only to herself and her 
father ; some one spot upon the history 
of the past which cast a shadow on the 
present. And yet, how could that be ? 
How could that be, he asked himself, 
when her whole life only amounted to 
nineteen years, and he had heard the 
history of those years over and over 
again ? How often he had artfully led 
Lucy to tell him the simple story of her 
cousin’s girlhood ! The governesses and 
masters that had come and gone at Fel- 
den Woods. The pOnies and dogs, and 
pup[)ies and kittens, and petted foals; 
the little scarlet riding-habit that had 
been made for the heiress, when she rode 
after the hounds with her cousin Andrew 


54 


AURORA FLOYD. 


Floyd. The worst blots that the officer 
could discover in those early years were 
a few broken china vases, and a pjreat 
deal of ink spilt over badly-written 
French exercises. And after being edu- 
cated at home until she was nearly eigh- 
teen, Aurora had been transferred to a 
Parisian finishing school ; and that was 
all. Her life had been the every-day 
life of other girls of her own position, 
and she differed from them only in being 
a great deal more fascinating, and a little 
more wilful, than the majority. 

Talbot laughed at himself for his 
doubts and hesitations. “ What a sus- 
picious brute I must be,” he said, “ when 
I imagine I have fallen upon the clue to 
some mystery simply because there is a 
mournful tenderness in the old man’s 
voice when he speaks to his only child I 
If I were sixty-seven years of age, and 
had such a daughter as Aurora, would 
there not always be a shuddering terror 
mingled with my love — a horrible dread 
that something would happen to take 
her away from me ? I will propose to 
Miss Floyd to-morrow.” 

Had Talbot been thoroughly candid 
with himself, he would perhaps have 
added, “Or John Mellish will make her 
an offer the day after.” 

Captain Bulstrode presented himself 
at the house on the East Cliff some time 
before noon on the next day ; but he 
found Mr. Mellish on the door-step talk- 
ing to Miss Floyd’s groom and inspect- 
ing the horses, which were waiting for 
the young ladies ; for the young ladies 
were going to ride, and John Mellish 
was going to ride with them. 

“But if you’ll join us, Bulstrode,” 
the Yorkshirernan said, good-naturedly, 
“you can ride the gray I spoke of yes- 
terday. Saunders shall go back and 
fetch him.” 

Talbot rejected this offer rather sulkily. 
“I’ve my own horses here, thank you,” 
he answered. “But if you’ll let your 
groom ride down to the stables and tell 
my man to bring them up, I shall be 
obliged to you.” 

After which condescending request 
Captain Bulstrode turned his back upon 
his friend, crossed the road, and foldi ng his 
arms upon the railings, stared resolutely 
at the sea. But in five minutes more 
the ladies appeared upon the door-step, 
and Talbot, turning at the sound of 


their voices, was fain to cross the road 
once more for the chance of taking Au- 
rora’s foot in his hand as she sprang 
into her saddle ; but John Mellish was 
before him again, and Miss Floyd’s mare 
was curveting under the touch of her 
light hand before the captain could in- 
terfere. He allowed the groom to attend 
to Lucy, and, mounting as quickly as his 
stiff leg would allow him, he prepared 
to take his place by Aurora’s side. Again 
he was too late ; Miss Floyd had can- 
tered down the hill attended by Mellish, 
and it was impossible for Talbot to leave 
poor Lucy, who was a timid horsewoman. 

The captain never admired Lucy so 
little as on horseback. His pale saint 
with the halo of golden hair seemed to 
him sadly out of place in a side-saddle. 
He looked back at the day of his morn- 
ing visit to Felden, and remembered 
how he had admired her, and how ex- 
actly she corresponded with his ideal, 
and how determined he was to be be- 
witched by her rather than by Aurora. 
“ If she had fallen in love with me,” he 
thought, “ I would have snapped my 
fingers at the black-browed heiress, and 
married this fair-haired angel out of 
hand. I meant to do that when I sold 
my commission. It was not for Aurora’s 
sake I left the army ; it was not Aurora 
whom I followed down here. Which 
did I follow? What did I follow, I 
wonder ? My destiny, I suppose, which 
is leading me through such a witch’s 
dance as I never thought to tread at the 
sober age of three-and-thirty. If Lucy 
had only loved me, it might have been 
all different.” 

He was so angry with himself, that 
he was half inclined to be angry with 
poor Lucy for not extricating him from 
the snares of Aurora. If he could have 
read that innocent heart, as he rode in 
sulky silence across the stunted turf on 
the wide downs! If he could have 
known the slow sick pain in that gentle 
breast, as the quiet girl by his side lifted 
her blue eyes every now and then to 
steal a glance at his hard profile and 
moody brow! If he could have read 
her secret later, when, talking of Aurora, 
he for the first time clearly betrayed the 
mystery of his own heart ! If he could 
have known how the landscape grew 
dim before her eyes, and how the brown 
moorland reeled beneath her horse’s 


* AURORA FLOYD. 


55 


hoofs until they seemed goinp^ down, 
down, down into some fathomless depth 
of sorrow and desf^air ! But he knew 
nothing of this ; and he thought Lucy 
Floyd a pretty, inanimate girl, who 
would no doubt be delighted to wear a 
becoming dress as bridesmaid at her 
cousin’s wedding. 

There was a dinner-party that evening 
upon the East Cliff, at which both John 
Mellish and Talbot were to assist, and 
the captain savagely determined to bring 
matters to an issue before the uight was 
out. 

Talbot Raleigh Bulstrode would have 
been very angry with you, had you 
watched him too closely that evening as 
he fastened the golden solitaire in his 
narrow cravat before his looking-glass 
in the bow-window at the Old Ship. He 
was ashamed of himself for being cause- 
lessly savage with his valet, whom he 
dismissed abruptly before he began to 
dress, and had not the courage to call 
the man back again when his own hot 
hands refused to do their office. He 
spilt half a bottleful of perfume upon his 
varnished boots, and smeared his face 
with a terrible waxy compound which 
promised to lisser sans graisser his 
moustache. He broke one of the crys- 
tal boxes in his dressing-case, and put 
the bits of broken glass in his waistcoat- 
pocket from sheer absence of mind. He 
underwent semi-strangulation with the 
unbending circular collar in which, as a 
gentleman, it was his duty to invest him- 
self ; and he could have beaten the ivory 
backs of his brushes upon his head in 
blind execration of that short, stubborn 
black hair, which only curled at the 
other ends; and when at last he emerged 
from his room, it was with a spiteful sen- 
sation that every waiter in the place 
knew his secret, and had a perfect know- 
ledge of every emotion in his breast, and 
that the very Newfoundland dog lying 
on the door-step had an inkling of the 
truth, as he lifted up his big head to 
look at the captain, and then dropped 
it again with a contemptuously lazy 
yawn. 

Captain Bulstrode offered a handful 
of broken glass to the man w'ho drove 
him to the East Cliff, and then confus- 
edly substituted about fifteen shillings 
worth of silver coin for that abnormal 
species of payment. There must have 


been two or three earthquakes and an 
eclipse or so going on in some part of 
the globe, he thought, for this jog-trot 
planet seemed all tumult and confusion 
to Talbot Bulstrode. The world was 
all Brighton, and Brighton was all blue 
moonlight, and steel-colored sea, and 
glancing, dazzling gas-light, and hare- 
soup, and cod and oysters, and Aurora 
Floyd. Yes, Aurora Floyd, who wore 
a white silk dress, and a thick circlet of 
dull gold upon her hair, who looked 
more like Cleopatra to-night than ever, 
and who suffered Mr. John Mellish to 
take her down to dinner. How Talbot 
hated the Yorkshireman’s big fair face, 
and blue eyes, and white teeth, as he 
watched the two young people across a 
phalanx of glass and silver, and flowers 
and wax-candles, and pickles, and other 
Fortnum-and-Mason ware! Here was 
a golden opportunity lost, thought the 
discontented captain, forgetful that he 
could scarcely have proposed to Miss 
Floyd at the dinner-table, amidst the 
jingle of glasses and popping of corks, 
and with a big powdered footman charg- 
ing at him with a side-dish or a sauce- 
tureen while he put the fatal question. 
The desired moment came a few hours 
afterwards, and Talbot had no longer 
any excuse for delay. 

The November evening was mild, and 
the three windows in the drawing-room 
were open from floor to ceiling. It was 
pleasant to look out from the hot gas- 
light upon that wide sweep of moon-lit 
ocean, with a white sail glimmering here 
'and there against the purple night. 
Captain Bulstrode sat near one of the 
open windows, watching that tranquil 
scene, wMth, I fear, very little apprecia- 
tion of its beauty. He was wishing that , 
the people would drop off and leave him 
alone with Aurora. It was close upon 
eleven o’clock, and high time they went. 
John Mellish would of course insist upon 
waiting for Talbot ; this was what a 
man had to endure on account of some 
old school-boy acquaintance. All Rug- 
by might turn up against him in a day 
or two, and dispute with him for Auro- 
ra’s smiles. But John Mellish was en- 
gaged in a very animated conversation 
with Archibald Floyd, having contrived 
with consummate artifice to ingratiate 
himself in the old man’s favor, and the 
visitors having one by one dropped off, 


56 


AURORA F LOYD. 


Aurora, with a listless yawn that she 
took little pains to conceal, strolled out 
into the broad iron balcony. Lucy was 
sitting at a table at the other end of the 
room, looking at a book of beauty. Oh, 
my poor Lucy! how much did you see 
of the Honorable Miss Rrownsmith’s 
high forehead and Roman nose ? Did 
not that young lady’s handsome face 
stare up at you dimly through a blind- 
ing mist of tears that you were a great 
deal too well educated to shed ? The 
chance had come at last. If life had 
been a Haymarket comedy, and the en- 
trances and exits arranged by Mr. Buck- 
stone himself, it could have fallen out no 
better than this. Talbot Bulstrode fol- 
lowed Aurora on to the balcony; John 
Mellish went on with his story about the 
Beverley foxhounds ; and Lucy, holding 
her breath at the other end of the room, 
knew as well what was going to happen 
as the captain himself. 

Is not life altogether a long comedy, 
with Fate for the stage-manager, and 
Passion, Inclination, Love, Hate, Re- 
venge, Ambition, and A varice by turns 
in the prompter’s box ? A tiresome 
comedy sometimes, with dreary, talkee, 
talkee front scenes which come to no- 
thing, but only serve to make the audi- 
ence more impatient as they wait while 
the stage is set and the great people 
change their dresses; ora “sensation” 
comedy, with unlooked-for tableaux and 
unexpected denouements ; but a comedy 
to the end of the chapter, for the sorrows 
which seem tragic to us are very funny 
when seen from the other side of the 
footlights; and our friends in the pit 
are as much amused with our trumpery 
griefs as the Haymarket habitues when 
Mr. Box finds his gridiron empty, or 
Mr. Cox misses his rasher. What can 
be funnier than other people’s anguish ? 
Why do we enjoy Mr. Maddison Mor- 
ton’s farces, and laugh till the tears run 
down our cheeks at the comedian who 
enacts them ? Because there is scarcely 
a farce upon the British stage which is 
not, from the rising to the dropping of 
the curtain, a record of human anguish 
and undeserved misery. Yes, undeserved 
and unnecessary torture — there is the 
special charm of the entertainment. If 
the man who was weak enough to send 
his wife to Camberwell had crushed a 
baby behind a chest of drawers, his suf- 


ferings wouldn’t be half so delightful to 
an intellectual audience. If the gentle- 
man who became embroiled with his 
laundress had murdered the young lady 
in the green boots, where would be the 
fun of that old Adelphi farce in which 
poor Wright was w^ont to delight us? 
And so it is with our friends on the 
other side of the footlights, wdio enjoy 
our troubles all the more because we 
have not always deserved them, and 
whose sorrow^s we shall gloat over by 
and by, when the bell for the next piece 
begins, and it is their turn to go on and 
act. 

Talbot Bulstrode w'ent out on to the 
balcony, and the earth stood still for ten 
minutes or so, and every steel-blue star 
in the sky glared watchfully down upon 
the young man in this the supreme crisis 
of his life. 

Aurora was leaning against a slender 
iron pilaster, looking aslant into the 
town and across the towm into the sea. 
She was wrapped in an opera cloak ; no 
stiff, embroidered, young-lady-fied gar- 
ment ; but a voluminous drapery of soft 
scarlet w^oolen stuff, such as Serniramide 
herself might have worn. “ She looks 
like Serniramide,” Talbot thought. 
“ How did this Scotch banker and his 
Lancashire wife come to have an Assyrian 
for their daughter ?” 

He began brilliantly, this young man, 
as lovers generally do. 

“I am afraid you must have fatigued 
yourself this evening. Miss Floyd,” he 
remarked. 

Aurora stifled a yawn as she answered 
him. “I am rather tired,” she said. 

It wasn’t very encouraging. How 
was he to begin an eloquent speech, 
wdien she might fall asleep in the middle 
of it ? But he did ; he dashed at once 
into the heart of tliis subject, and he 
told her how he loved her ; how he had 
done battle with this passion, which had 
been too strong for him ; how he loved 
her as he never thought to love any 
creature upon this earth ; and how he 
cast himself before her in all humility to 
take his sentence of life or death from 
her dear lips. 

She was silent for some moments, her 
profile sharply distinct to him in the 
moonlight, .and those dear lips trembling 
visibly. Then, with a half-averted face, 
and in words that seemed to come 


AURORA FLOYD. 


57 


slowly and painfully from a stifled throat, 
she gave him his answer. 

That answer was a rejection I 

Not a young lady’s No, which means 
yes to-morrow, or which means perhaps 
that you have not been on your knees 
in a passion of despair, like Lord Ed- 
ward Fitz-Morkysh in Miss Oderose’s 
last novel. Nothing of this kind ; but a 
calm negative, carefully and tersely 
worded, as if she feared to mislead him 
by so much as one syllable that could 
leave a loophole through which hope 
might creep into his heart. He was 
rejected. For a moment it was quite 
as much as he could do to believe it. 
He was inclined to imagine that the 
signification of certain words had sud- 
denly changed, or that he had been in 
the habit of mistaking them all his life, 
rather than that those words meant this 
hard fact ; namely, that he, Talbot 
Raleigh Bulstrode, of Bulstrode Castle, 
and of Saxon extraction, had been re- 
jected by the daughter of a Lombard- 
Street banker. 

He paused — for an hour and a half 
or so, as it seemed to him — in order to 
collect himself before he spoke again. 

“ May I — venture to inquire,” he said, 
— how horribly commonplace the phrase 
seemed ; he could have used no worse 
had he been inquiring for furnished 
lodgings, — “ may I ask if any prior 
attachment — to one more worthy — ” 

“ Oh, no, no, no !” 

The answer came upon him so sud- 
denly, that it almost startled him as 
much as her rejection. 

“And yet your decision is irrevocable?” 

“ Quite irrevocable.” 

“ Forgive me if I am intrusive ; but 
— Mr. Floyd may perhaps have formed 
some higher views — ” 

He was interrupted by a stifled sob 
as she clasped her hands over her averted 
face. 

“ Higher^views !” she said; “poor 
dear old man, no, no, indeed.” 

“ It is scarcely strange that I bore 
you with thase questions. It is so hard 
to think that, meeting you with your 
alfections disengaged, I have yet iDeen 
utterly unable to win one shadow of 
regard upon which I might build a hope 
for the future.” 

Poor Talbot ! Talbot, the splitter of 
metaphysical straws and chopper of 


logic, talking of building hopes on 
shadows, with a lover’s delirious stu- 
pidity. 

“It is so hard to resign every thought 
of your ever coming to alter your decision 
of to-night, Aurora,” — he lingered on 
her name for a moment, first because it 
was so sweet to say it, and, secondly, in 
the hope that she would speak, — “it is 
so hard to remember the fabric of hap- 
piness I had dared to build, and to lay 
it down here to-night for ever.” 

Talbot quite forgot that, up to the 
time of the arrival of John Mellish, he 
had been perpetually arguing against 
his passion, and had declared to himself 
over and over again that he would be a 
consummate fool if he was ever beguiled 
into making Aurora his wife. He re- 
versed the parable of the fox ; for he had 
been inclined to make faces at the grapes 
while he fancied them within his reach, 
and now that they were removed from 
his grasp, he thought that such delicious 
fruit had never grown to tempt mankind. 

“If — if,” he said, “ my fate had been 
happier, I know how proud ujy father, 
poor old Sir John, would have been of 
his eldest son’s choice.” 

How ashamed he felt of the meanness 
of this speech ! The artful sentence had 
been constructed in order to remind 
Aurora whom she was refusing. He 
was trying to bribe her with the baro- 
netcy which was to be his in due time. 
But she made no answer to the pitful 
appeal. Talbot was almost choked with 
mortification. “ I see — I see,” he 
said, “ that it is hopeless. Good night, 
Miss Floyd.” 

SheViid not even turn to look at him 
as she left the balcony ; but with her 
red drapery wrapped tightly round her, 
stood shivering in the moonlight, with 
the silent tears slowly stealing down her ^ 
cheeks. 

“ Higher views 1” she cried bitterly, 
repeating a phrase that Talbot used, — 

“ higher views I God help him 1” 

“ I must wish you good night and 
good by at the same time,” Captain 
Bulstrode said, as he shook hands with 
Lucy. 

“ Good by ?” 

“Yes; I leave Brighton early to- 
morrow.” 

“ So suddenly.” 

“ Why not exactly suddenly. I always 


58 


AURORA FLOYD. 


meant to travel this winter. Can I do 
any thing for you — at Cairo 

He was so pale and cold and wretched- 
looking, that she almost pitied him — 
pitied him in spite of the wild joy 
growing up in her heart. Aurora had 
refused him — it was perfectly clear — re- 
fused him! The soft blue eyes filled 
with tears at the thought that a demi- 
god should have endured such humilia- 
tion. Talbot pressed her hand gently 
in his own clammy palm. He could 
read pity in that tender look, but pos- 
sessed no lexicon by which he could 
translate its deeper meaning. 

“You will wish your uncle good by 
for me, Lucy,” he said. He called her 
Lucy for the first time ; but what did it 
matter now? His great affliction set 
him apart from his fellow-men, and gave 
him dismal privileges. “ Good night, 
Lucy ; good night and good by. I — I 
— shall hope to see you again in a year 
or two.” 

The pavement of the East Cliff 
seemed so much air beneath Talbot Bul- 
strode’s boots as he strode back to the 
Old Ship ; for it is peculiar to us, in 
our moments of supreme trouble or joy, 
to lose all consciousness of the earth we 
tread, and to float upon an atmosphere 
of sublime egotism. 

But the captain did not leave Brjgh- 
ton tile next day on the first stage of 
his Egyptian journey. He stayed at 
the fasliionable watering-})lace ; but he 
resolutely abjured the neighborhood of 
the East Clitf, and, the day being wet, 
took a pleasant walk to Shoreham 
through the rain ; and Shoreham being 
such a pretty place, he was no doubt 
much enlivened by that exercise. 

Keturning through the fog at about 
four o’clock, the captain met Mr. John 
Mellish close against the turnpike out- 
side Cliftonville. 

The two men stared aghast at each 
other. 

“ Why, where on earth are you 
going ?” asked Talbot. 

“Back to Yorkshire by the first train 
that leaves Brighton.” 

“ But this isn’t the way to the sta- 
tion 1” 

“No ; but they’re putting the horses 
in my portmanteau, and my shirts are . 
going by the Leeds cattle-train ; and — ” 

Talbot Bulstrode burst into a loud i 


laugh, a harsh and bitter cachinnation, 
but affording wondrous relief to that 
gentleman’s over-charged breast. 

“John Mellish,” he said, “yon have 
been proj'iosing to Aurora Floyd.” 

The Yorkshiremen turned scarlet. 
“ It — it — wasn’t honorable of her to tell 
you,” he stammered. 

“ Miss Floyd has never breathed a 
word tome upon the subject. I’ve just 
come from Shoreham, and you’ve only 
lately left the East Cliff. You’ve pro- 
posed, and you’ve been rejected.” 

“I have,” roared John; “and it’s 
doosed hard when I promised her she 
should keep a racing stud if she liked, 
and enter as many colts as she pleased 
for the Derby, and give her own orders 
to the trainer, and I’d never interfere ; 
and — and — Mellish Park is one of the 
finest places in the county ; and I’d 
have won her a bit of blue ribbon to 
tie up her bonny black hair. 

“ That old Frenchman was right,” 
muttered Captain Bulstrode ; “ there is 
a great satisfaction in the misfortunes 
of others. If I go to my dentist, I like 
to find another wretch in the waiting- 
room ; and I like to have my tooth ex- 
tracted first, and to see him glare en- 
viously at me as I come out of the 
torture chamber, knowing that my 
troubles are over, while his are to come. 
Good by, John Mellish, and God bless 
you. You’re not such a bad fellow 
after all.” 

Talbot felt almost cheerful as he 
walked back to the Ship, and he took 
a mutton cutlet and tomato sauce, and 
a pint of Moselle for his dinner; and 
the food and wine warmed him ; and 
not having slept a wink on the previous 
night, he fell into a heavy indigestible 
slumber, with his head hanging over the 
sofa-cushion, and dreamt that he was at 
Grand Cairo (or at a place which would 
have been that city had it not been now 
and then Bulstrode Castle, and occa- 
sionally chambers in the Albany) ; and 
that Aurora Floyd was with him, clad in 
imperial purple, with hieroglyphics on the 
hem of her robe, aud wearing a clown’s 
jacket of white satin and scarlet spots, 
such as he had once seen foremost in a 
great race. Captain Bulstrode arose 
early the next morning, with the full in- 
tention of departing from Sussex by the 
8.45 express; but suddenly remember- 


AURORA FLOYD. 


59 


in" that lie had but poorly acknowledged 
Archibald Floyd’s cordiality, he de- 
termined on sacriticing his inclinations 
on the shrine of courtesy, and calling 
once more at the East Cliff to take leave 
of the banker. Having once resolved 
upon this line of action, the captain 
Would fain have hurried that moment to 
Mr. Floyd’s house ; but finding that it 
was only half-past seven, he was com- 
pelled to restrain his impatience and 
await a more seasonable hour. Could 
he go at nine ? Scarcely. At ten ? 
Yes, surely, as he could then leave by 
the eleven o’clock train. He sent his 
breakfast away untouched, and sat look- 
ing at his watch in a mad hurry for the 
time to pass, yet growing hot and un- 
comfortable as the' hour drew near. 

At a quarter to ten he put on his hat 
and left the hotel. Mr. Floyd was at 
home, the servant told him — upstairs in 
the little study, he thought. Talbot 
waited for no more. “You need not 
announce me,” he said ; “ I know where 
to find your master.” 

The study was on the same floor as 
the drawing-room, and close against 
the drawing-door Talbot paused for a 
moment. The door was open ; the 
room empty ; no, not empty : Aurora 
Floyd was there, seated with her* back 
towards him, and her head leaning on 
the cushions of her chair. He stopped 
for another moment to admire the back 
view of that small head with its crown 
of lustrous raven hair, then took a step 
or two in the direction of the banker’s 
study ; then stopped again, then turned 
back, went into the drawing-room, and 
shut the door behind him. 

She did not stir as he approached 
her, nor answer when he stammered her 
name. Her face was as white as the 
face of a dead woman, and her nerveless 
hands hung over the cushions of the 
arm-chair. A newspaper was lying at 
her feet. She had quietly swooned 
away sitting there by herself, with no 
one by to restore her to consciousness. 

Talbot flung some flowers from a vase 
on the table, and dashed the water over 
Aurora’s forehead ; then wheeling her 
chair close to the open window, he set 
her with her face to the wind. In two 
or three moments she began to shiver 
violently, and soon afterwards opened 
her eyes, and looked at him : as she did 


so, she put her hands to her head, as if 
trying to remember something. “ Tal- 
bot 1” she said, “ Talbot !” 

She called him by his Christian name, 
she who five-and-thirty hours before had 
coldly forbidden him to hope. 

“ Aurora,” he cried, “ Aurora, I 
thought I came here to wish your father 
good-by ; but I deceived myself. 1 
came to ask you once more, and once 
for all, if your decision of the night 
before last was irrevocable ?” 

“Heaven knows I thought it was 
when I uttered it.” 

“ But it was not ?” 

“ Do you wish me to revoke it ?” 

“ Do I wish ? do I—” 

“ Because if you really do, I will 
revoke it ; for you are a brave and 
honorable man, Captain Bulstrode, and 
I love you very dearly.” 

Heaven knows into what rhapsodies 
he might have fallen, but she put up 
her hand, as much as to say, “ Forbear 
to-day, if you love me,” and hurried 
from the room. He had accepted the 
cup of bhang which the syren had offered, 
and had drained the very dregs thereof, 
and was drunken. He dropped into the 
chair in which Aurora had sat, and, 
absent-minded in his joyful intoxication, 
picked up the newspaper that had lain 
at her feet. He shuddered in spite of 
himself as he looked at the title of the 
journal ; it was BelVs Life. A dirty 
copy, crumbled, and beer-stained, and 
emitting rank odors of inferior tobacco. 
It was directed to Miss Floyd, in such 
sprawling penmanship as might have 
disgraced the potboy of a sporting 
public-house : 

“ Miss Floid, 

fell dun wodes, « 

kent.” 

The newspaper had been redirected 
to Aurora by the housekeeper at Felden. 
Talbot ran his eye eagerly over the 
front page ; it was almost entirely filled 
with advertisements (and such advertise- 
ments !), but in one column there was an 
account headed, “Frightful Accident 
IN Germany: an English Jockey 

KILLED. ” 

Captain Bulstrode never knew why 
he read of this accident. It was in no 
way interesting to him, being an ac- 
count of a steeple-chase in Prussia, in 
which a heavy English rider and a crack 


60 


AURORA FLOYD. 


French horse had been killed. There 
was a great deal of regret expressed for 
the loss of the horse, and none for the 
man who had ridden him, who, the 
reporter stated, was very little known in 
sporting circles ; but in a paragraph 
lower down was added this information, 
evidently procured at the last moment : 
“The jockey’s name was Conyers.” 


CHAPTER VII. 
aurora’s strange pensioner. 

Archibald Floyd received the news 
of his daughter’s choice with evident 
pride and satisfaction. It seemed as if 
some heavy burden had been taken 
away, as if some cruel shadow had 
been lifted from the lives of father and 
daughter. 

The banker took his family back to 
Felden Woods, with Talbot Bulstrode 
in his train ; and the chintz rooms — 
pretty, cheerful chambers, with bow- 
windows that looked across the well- 
kept stable-yard into long glades of oak 
and beech — were prepared for the ex- 
hussar, who was to spend his Christmas 
at Felden. 

Mrs. Alexander and her husband were 
established with their family in the 
western wing; Mr. and Mrs. Andrew 
were located at the eastern angle; for 
it was the hospitable custom of the old 
banker to summon his kinsfolk about 
him early in December, and to keep 
them with him till the bells of romantic 
Beckenham church had heralded in the 
Kew Year. 

Lucy Floyd’s cheeks had lost much 
of their delicate color when she re- 
turned to Felden, and it was pronounced, 
by all who observed the change, that 
the air of East Cliff, and the autumn 
winds drifting across the bleak downs, 
had been too much for the young lady’s 
strength. 

Aurora seemed to have burst forth 
into some new and more glorious beauty 
since the morning upon which she had 
accepted the hand of Talbot Bulstrode. 
There was a proud defiance in her man- 
ner, which became her better than gen- 
tleness becomes far lovelier women. 


There was a haughty insouciance about 
this young lady which gave new bril- 
liancy to her great black eyes, and new 
music to her joyous laugh. She was 
like some beautiful, noisy, boisterous 
waterfall; for ever dancing, rushing, 
sparkling, scintillating, and utterly defy- 
ing you to do any thing but admire it. 
Talbot Bulstrode, having once - aban- 
doned himself to the spell of the siren, 
made no further struggle, but fairly fell 
into the pit-falls of her eyes, and was 
entangled in the meshy network of her 
blue-black hair. The greater the ten- 
sion of the bow-string, the stronger the 
rebound thereof ; and Talbot Bulstrode 
was as weak to give way at last as he 
had long been powerful to resist. I 
must write his story in the commonest 
words. He could not help it ! He 
loved her: not because he thought her 
better, or wiser, or lovelier, or more 
suited to him than many other women — 
indeed he had grave doubts upon every 
one of these points — but because it was 
his destiny, and he loved her. 

What is that hard word which M. Vic- 
tor Hugo puts into the mouth of the 
priest in The Hunchback of Notre 
Dame as an excuse for the darkness of 
his sin? Anakihe! It was his fate. 
So he wrote to his mother, and told her 
that he had chosen a wife, who was to 
sit in the halls of Bulstrode, and whose 
name was to be interwoven with the 
chronicles of the house ; told her, more- 
over, that Miss Floyd was a banker’s 
daughter, beautiful and fascinating, with 
big black eyes, and fifty thousand pounds 
for her dowry. Lady Raleigh Bulstrode 
answered her son’s letter upon a quarter 
of a quire of note-paper, filled with fear- 
ful motherly' prayers and suggestions ; 
anxious hopes that he had chosen wise- 
ly; questionings as to the opinions and 
religious principles of the young lady — 
much indeed that Talbot would have 
been sorely puzzled to answer. En- 
closed in this was a letter to Aurora, a 
womanly and tenderly epistle, in which 
pride was tempered with love, and which 
brought big tears welling up to Miss 
Floyd’s eyes, until Lady Bulstrode’s 
firm penmanship grew blotted and blur- 
red beneath the reader’s vision. 

And whither went poor slaughtered 
John Mellish ? He returned to Mellish 
Park, carrying with him his dogs, and 


AURORA FLOYD. 


61 


horses, and grooms, and phaeton, and 
other paraphernalia ; but his grief — 
having unluckily come upon him after 
the racing season — was too much for 
him, and he fled away from the roomy 
old mansion, with its pleasant surround- 
ings of ))ark and woodland ; for Aurora 
Floyd was not for him, and it was all 
flat, stale, and unprofitable. So he 
went to Paris, or Parry, as lie called 
that imperial city, and established him- 
self in the biggest chambers at Meu- 
rice’s, and went backwards and forwards 
between that establishment and Galig- 
nani’s ten times a day, in quest of the 
English papers. He dined drearily at 
Yefour’s, the Trois Freres, and the Cafe 
de Paris. His big voice was heard at 
every expensive dining-place in Paris, 
ordering “Yoos killyar de mellyour: 
vous samz;'^ but h6 sent the daintiest 
dishes away untasted, and would sit for 
a quarter of an hour counting the tooth- 
picks in the tiny blue vases, and think- 
ing of Aurora. He rode dismally in 
the Bois de Boulogne, and sat shivering 
in cafes chantants, listening to songs 
that always seemed set to the same 
melody. He haunted the circuses, and 
was well nigh in love with a fair manege 
rider, who had black eyes, and reminded 
him of Aurora ; till, upon buying the 
most powerful opera-glass that the Rue 
de Rivoli could afford, he discovered 
that the lady’s face was an inch deep in 
a certain whitewash called hlanc rosati, 
and that the chief glory of her eyes were 
the rings of Indian ink which surround- 
ed them. He could have dashed that 
double-barrelled truth-revealer to the 
ground, and trodden the lenses to pow- 
der with his heel, in his passion of 
despair; better to have been for ever 
deceived, to have gone on believing that 
woman to be like Aurora, and to have 
gone tp that circus every night until his 
hair grew white, but not with age, and 
until he pined away and died. 

The party at Felden Woods was a 
very joyous one. The voices of child- 
ren made the house pleasant ; noisy lads 
from Eton and Westminster clambered 
about the balustrades of the staircases, 
and played battledore-and-shuttlecock 
upon the long stone terrace. These 
young people were all cousins to Aurora 
Floyd, and loved the banker’s daughter 
with a childish worship, which mild 


Lucy could never inspire. It was plea- 
sant to Talbot Bulstrode to see that 
wherever his future wife trod, love and 
admiration waited upon her footsteps. 
He was not singular in his passion for 
this glorious creature, and it could be, 
after all, no such terrible folly to love 
one who was beloved by all who knew 
her. So the proud Cornishman was 
happy, and gave himself up to his hap- 
piness without further protest. 

Did Aurora love him ? Did she make 
him due return for the passionate devo- 
tion, the blind adoration ? She admired 
and esteemed him ; she was proud of 
him — proud of that very pride in his 
nature which made him so different to 
herself, and she was too impulsive and 
truthful a creature to keep this sentiment 
a secret from her lover. She revealed, 
too, a constant desire to please her be- 
trothed husband, suppressing at least all 
outward token of the tastes that were so 
unpleasant to him. No more copies of 
BeWs Life littered the ladies’ morning- 
room at Felden ; and when Andrew 
Floyd asked Aurora to ride to meet with 
him, his cousin refused the offer, which 
would once have been so welcome. In- 
stead of following the Croydon hounds. 
Miss Floyd was content to drive Talbot 
and Lucy in a basket carriage through 
the frost-bespangled country-side. Lucy 
was always the companion and confidante 
of the lovers; it was hard for her to hear 
their happy talk of the bright future 
stretching far away before them^stretch- 
ing down, down the shadowy aisles of 
Time, to an escutcheoned tomb at Bul- 
strode, where husband and wife would 
lie down, full of years and honor, in the 
days to come. It was hard to have to 
help them plan a thousand schemes of 
pleasure, in which — Heaven pity her I — 
she was to join ; but she bore her cross 
meekly, the pale Elaine of modern days, 
and she never told Talbot Bulstrode that 
she had gone mad and loved him, and 
was fain to die. 

Talbot and Aurora were both con- 
cerned to see the pale cheeks of their 
gentle companion ; but every body was 
ready to ascribe them to a cold, or a 
cough, or constitutional debility, or some 
other bodily evil, which was to be cured 
by drugs and boluses ; and no one for a 
moment imagined that any thing could 
possibly be amiss with a young lady who 


62 


AURORA FLOYH. 


lived in a luxurious house, went shopping 
in a carriage and pair, and had more 
pocket-money than she cared to spend. 
But the lily maid of Astolat lived in a 
lordly castle, and had doubtless ample 
pocket-money to buy gorgeous silks for 
her embroidery, and had little on earth 
to wish for, and nothing to do; whereby 
she fell sick for love of Sir Lancelot, and 
pined and died. 

Surely the secret of many sorrows lies 
in this. How many a grief has been 
bred of idleness and leisure I How many 
a Spartan youth has nursed a bosom- 
devouring fox for very lack of better 
employment I * Do the gentlemen who 
write the leaders in our daily journals 
ever die of grief? Do the barristers 
whose names appear in almost every case 
reported in those journals go mad for 
love unrequited ? Did the Lady with 
THE LAMP cherish any foolish passion in 
those days and nights of ceaseless toil, 
in those long watches of patient devotion 
far away in the east ? Do the cprates 
of over-crowded parishes, the chaplains 
of jails and convict-ships, the great 
medical attendants in the wards Qf hos- 
pitals — do they make for themselves the 
griefs that kill ? Surely not. A¥ith the 
busiest of us there may be some holy 
moments, some sacred hour snatched 
from the noise and confusion of the re- 
volving wheel of Life’s machinery, and 
offered up as a sacrifice to sorrow and 
care; but the interval is brief, and the 
great wheel rolls on, and we have no 
time to pine or die. 

So Lucy Floyd, having nothing better 
to do, nursed and made much of her 
hopeless passion. She set up an altar 
for the skeleton, and worshiped at the 
shrine of her grief; and when people told 
her of her pale face, and the family doc- 
tor wondered at the failure of his quinine 
mixture, perhaps she nourished a vague 
hope that before the spring-time came 
back again, bringing with it the wedding- 
day of Talbot and Aurora, she would 
have escaped from all this demonstrative 
love and liappiness, at)d be at rest. 

Aurora answered Lady Raleigh Bul- 
strode’s letter with an ei)istle expressive 
of such gratitude and humility, such 
earnest hope of winning the love of Tal- 
bot’s mother, mingled with a dim fear- 
fulness of never being worthy of that 
affection, as won the Cornish lady’s re- 


gard for her future daughter. It was 
difficult to associate the impetuous girl 
with that letter, and Lady Bulstrode 
made an image of the writer that very 
much differed from the fearless and dash- 
ing original. Slie wrote Aurora a sec- 
ond letter, more affectionately worded 
than the first, and promised the mother- 
less girl a daughter’s welcome at Bul- 
strode. 

“Will she ever let me call her ‘mo- 
ther,’ Talbot ?” Aurora asked, as she 
read Lady Bulstrode’s second letter to 
her lover. “ She is very proud is she not 
— proud of your ancient descent? My 
father comes from a Glasgow mercantile 
family, and I do not even know any thing 
about my mother’s relations.” 

Talbot answered her with a grave 
smile. 

“ She will accept you for your native 
worth, dearest Aurora,” he said, “ and 
will ask no foolish questions about the 
pedigree of such a man as Archibald 
Floyd ; a man whom the proudest aris- 
tocrat in England might be glad to call 
his father-in-law. She will reverence my 
Aurora’s transparent soul and candid 
nature, and will bless me for the choice 
1 have made.” 

“ I shall love her very dearly if she 
will only let me. Should 1 have ever 
cared about horse-racing, and read sport- 
ing-papers, if 1 could have called a good 
woman ‘mother?’” 

She seemed to ask this question rather 
of herself than of Talbot. 

Complete as was Archibald Floyd's 
satisfaction at his daughter’s disposal of 
her heart, the old man could no; calmly 
contemplate a separation from this idol- 
ised daughter; so Aurora told Talbot 
that she could never take up her abode 
in Cornwall during her father’s lifetime; 
and it was finally arranged that the young 
couple were to spend half the •year in 
London, and the other half at Felden 
Woods. What need had the lonely wid- 
ower of that roomy mansion, with its 
long picture-gallery and snug suites of 
apartments, each of them large enough 
to accojumodate a small family ? What 
need had one solitary old man of that 
retinue ofservants, the costly stud in the 
stables, the new-fangled vehicles in tlie 
coach-houses, the hot-house flowers, the 
pines and grapes and peaches, cullivateil 
by three Scottish gardeners ? What 


AURORA FLOYD. 


63 


need had he of these things ? He lived 
principally in the study, in which he had 
once had a stormy interview with his 
only child ; the study in which hung the 
crayon portrait of Eliza Floyd ; the room 
which contained an old-fashioned desk 
he had bought for a guinea in his boy- 
hood, and in which there were certain 
letters written by a hand that was dead, 
some tresses of purple black hair cut 
from the head of a corpse, and a paste- 
board ticket, printed at a little town in 
Lancashire, calling upon the friends and 
patrons of Miss Eliza Percival to come 
to the theatre, for her especial benefit, 
upon the night of August 20, 1837. 

It was decided, therefore, that Felden 
Woods was to be the country residence 
of Talbot and Aurora, till such time as 
the young man should succeed to the 
baronetcy and Bulstrode Castle, and be 
required to live upon his estate." *In the 
mean time the ex-hussar was to go into 
Parliament, if the electors of a certain 
little borough in Cornwall, which had 
always sent a Bulstrode to Westminster, 
should be pleased to return him. 

The marriage was to take place early 
in May, and the honeymoon was to be 
spent in Switzerland and at Bulstrode 
Castle. Mrs. Walter Powell thought 
that her doom was sealed, and that she 
would have to quit those pleasant 
pastures after the wedding-day ; but 
Aurora speedily set the mind of the en- 
sign’s widow at rest .by telling her that 
as she, Miss Floyd, was utterly ignorant 
of housekeeping, she would be happy to 
retain her services after marriage as 
guide and adviser in such matters. 

The poor about Beckenham were not 
forgotten in Aurora Floyd’s morning 
drives with Lucy and Talbot. Parcels 
of grocery and bottles of wine often 
lurked beneath the crimson-lined leop- 
ard-skii^ carriage-rug ; and it was no 
uncommon thing for Talbot to find him- 
self making a footstool of a huge loaf of 
bread. The poor were very hungry in 
that bright December weather, and had 
all matmer of complaints, which, how- 
ever otherwise dissimilar, were all to be 
benefited by one special treatment ; 
namely, half-sovereigns, old brown 
sherry, French brandy, and gunpowder 
tea. Whether the daughter was dying 
of consumption, or the father laid up 
with the rheumatics, or the husband in 


a raging fever, or the youngest boy re- 
covering from a fall into a copper of 
boiling water, the above-named reme- 
dies seemed alike necessary, and were 
far more popular than the chicken- 
broths and cooling fever-drinks prepared 
by the Felden cook. It pleased Tal- 
bot to see his betrothed dispensing, 
good things to the eager recipients of 
her bounty. It pleased him to think 
how even his mother must have admired 
this high-spirited girl, content to sit 
down in close cottage chambers and 
talk to rheumatic old women. Lucy 
distributed little parcels of tracts pre- 
pared by Mrs. Alexander, and flannel 
garments made by her own white hands ; 
but Aurora gave the half sovereigns and 
the old sherry; and I’m afraid these 
sinqile cottagers liked the heiress best, 
although they were wise enough and 
just enough to know that each lady 
gave according to her means. 

It was in returning from a round of 
these charitable visits that an adventure 
befell the little party, which was by no 
means pleasing to Captain Bulstrode. 

Aurora had driven further than usual, 
and it was striking four as her ponies 
dashed past Beckenham church and 
down the hill towards Felden Woods. 
The afternoon was cold and cheerless ; 
light flakes of snow drifted across the 
hard road, and hung here and there 
upon the leafless hedges, and there was 
that inky blackness in the sky which 
presages a heavy fall. The woman at 
the lodge ran out with her apron over 
her head to open the gates as Miss 
Floyd’s ponies approached, and at the 
same moment a man rose from a bank 
by the roadside, and came close up to 
the little carri^e. 

He was a oroad-shouldered, stout 
built fellow, wearing a shabby velveteen 
cut-away coat, slashed about with abnor- 
mal pockets, and white and greasy at 
the seams and elbows. His chin was 
muffled in two or three yards of dirty 
woolen comforter, after the fashion ot 
his kind ; and the band of his low- 
crowned felt hat was ornamented with a 
short clay pipe, colored of a respectable 
blackness. A dingy white dog, with a 
brass-collar, bow legs, a short nose, 
blood-shot eyes, one ear, a hanging jaw, 
and a generally supercilious expression 
of countenance, rose from the bank at 


64 


AURORA FLOYD. 


the same moment with his master, and 
growled ominously at the elegant vehicle 
and the mastiff Bow-wow trotting by its 
side. 

The stranger was the same individual 
who had accosted Miss Floyd in Cock- 
spur Street three months before. 

I do not know whether Miss Floyd 
recognized this person ; but I know that 
she touched her ponies’ ears with the 
whip, and that the spirited animals 
had dashed past the man, and through 
the gates of Felden, when he sprang 
forward, canght at their heads, and 
stopped the light basket-carriage, which 
rocked under the force of his strong 
hand. 

Talbot Bulstrode leapt from the 
vehicle, heedless of his stiff leg, and 
caught the man by the collar. 

“Let go that bridle !” he cried, lift- 
ing his cane; “how dare you stop this 
lady’s ponies ?” 

“ Because I wanted to speak to her, 
that’s why. Let go of my coat, will 
yer ?” 

The dog made at Talbot’s legs, but 
the young man whirled round his cane 
and inflicted such chastisement upon the 
snub-nose of that animal as sent him 
into temporary retirement, howling dis- 
mally. 

“ You are an insolent scoundrel, and 
I’ve a good mind to — ” 

“You’d be hinserlent p’raps, if yer 
was hungry,” answered the man, with a 
pitiful whine, which was meant to be 
conciliating. “ Such weather as this 
here’s all very well for young swells 
such as you, as has’your dawgs and guns 
and ’untin’ ; but the winter’s tryiri’ to a 
poor man’s temper, when he’s indus- 
trious and willin’, and can’t get a stroke 
of honest work to do, of a mouthful of 
vittals. I only want to speak to the 
young lady ; she knows me well enough ” 

“ Which young lady ?” 

“ Miss Floyd ; the heiress.” 

They were standing a little way from 
the pony-carriage. Aurora had risen 
from her seat and flung the reins to 
Lucy ; she was looking towards the two 
men, pale and breathless, doubtless ter- 
rified for the result of the encounter. 

Talbot released the man’s collar, and 
went back to Miss Floyd. 

“ Do you know this person, Aurora ?” 
he asked. 


“Yes.” 

“ He is one of your old pensioners, I 
suppose ?” 

“ He is ; do not say any thing more 
to him, Talbot. His manner is rough, 
but he means no harm. Stop with Lucy 
while I speak to him.” 

Rapid and impetuous in all her move- 
ments, she sprang from the carriage and 
joined the man beneath the bare branches 
of the trees before Talbot could remon- 
strate. 

The dog, which had crawled slowly 
back to his master’s side, fawned upon 
her as she approached, and was driven 
away by a fierce growl from Bow-wow, 
who was little likely to brook any such 
vulgar rivalry. 

The man removed his felt hat, and 
tugged ceremoniously at a tuft of sandy- 
ish hair which ornamented his low fore- 
head. • 

“ You might have spoken to a cove 
without all this here row. Miss Floyd,” 
he said, in an injured tone. 

Aurora looked at him indignantly. 

“ Why did you stop me here ?” she 
said ; “ why couldn’t you write to me ?” 

“ Because writin’s never so much good 
as speakin’, and because such young la- 
dies as you are uncommon difficult to 
get at. How did I know that your pa 
mightn’t have put his hand upon my let- 
ter, and there’d have been a pretty to do ; 
though I dessay, as for that, if I was to 
go up to the house, and ask the old gent 
for a trifle, he wouldn’t be back’ard in 
givin’ it. I dessay he’d be good for a 
fi’-pun note ; or a tenner, if it came to 
that.” 

Aurora’s eyes flashed sparks of fire 
as she turned upon the speaker. “If 
ever you dare to annoy my father, you 
shall pay dearly for it, Matthew Harri- 
son,” she said ; “ not that I fear any 
thing you can say, but I will yot have 
him annoyed ; I will not have him tor- 
mented. He has borne enough, and 
suffered enough. Heaven knows, without 
that. I will not have him harassed, and 
his best and tenderest feelings made a 
market of, by such as you. I will not !” 

She stamped her foot upon the frosty 
ground a^ she spoke. Talbot Bulstrode 
saw and wondered at the gesture. He 
had half a mind to leave the carriage 
and join Aurora and her petitioner; but 
the ponies were restless, and he knew 


AURORA FLOYD. 


65 


that it would uot do to abandon the 
reins to poor timid Lucy. 

“You needn’t take on so, Miss 
Floyd,” answered the man, whom Au- 
rora had addressed as Matthew Harri- 
son ; “I’m sure I want to make things 
pleasant to all parties. All I ask is, that 
you’ll act a little liberal to a cove wot’s 
come down in the .world since you see 
him last. Lord, wot a world it is for 
ups and downs I If it had been the 
summer season, I’d have had no needs to 
worrit you ; but what’s the good of 
standin’ at the top of Regent-street such 
weather as this with terrier-pups and 
such likes ? Old ladies has no eye for 
dawgs in the winter ; and even the gents 
as cares for rat-catching is gettin’ un- 
common scarce. There aift’t nothink 
doin’ on the turf whereby a chap can 
make a honest penny ; nor won’t be, 
come the Craven Meetin’. I’d never have 
come anigh you, miss, if I hadn’t been 
hard up; and I know you’ll act liberal.” 

“ Act liberally I” cried Aurora ; “ good 
heavens, if every guinea I have, or ever 
hope to have, could blot out the business 
that you trade upon, I’d open ray hands 
and let the money run through them as 
freely as so much water.” 

“It was only good-natured of me to 
send you that ere paper, though, miss, 
eh ?”said Mr. Matthew Harrison, pluck- 
ing a dry twig from the tree nearest him, 
and chewing it for his delectation. 

Aurora and the man had walked 
slowly onward as they spoke, and were 
by this time at some distance from the 
pony-carriage. 

Talbot Bulstrode was in a fever of 
restless impatience. 

“ Do you know this pensioner of your 
cousin’s, Lucy ?” he asked. 

“No, I can’t remember his face. I 
don’t think he belongs to Beckenham.” 

“ Why, if I hadn’t have sent you that 
ere Life, you wouldn’t have know’d, 
would you now ?” said the man. 

“ No, no, perhaps not,” answered Au- 
rora. She had taken her portemonnaie 
from her pocket, and Mr. Harrison was 
furtively regarding the little morocco 
receptacle with glistening eyes. 

“You don’t ask me about any of the 
particulars,” he said. 

“ No. What should I care to know 
of them ?” 

“No, certainly,” answered the man, 

4 


suppressing a chuckle; “you know 
enough, if it comes to that ; and if you 
wanted to know any more, I couldn’t 
tell you ; for them few lines in the paper 
is all I could ever get hold of about the 
business. But I always said it, and I 
always will, if a man as rides up’ards of 
of eleven stone — ” 

It seemed as if he were in a fair way 
of rambling on for ever so long, if Au- 
rora had not checked him by an impa- 
tient frown. Perhaps he stopped all the 
more readily as she opened her purse at 
the same moment, and he caught sight of 
the glittering sovereigns lurking between 
leaves of crimson silk. He had no very 
acute sense of color ; but I am sure that 
he thought gold and crimson made a 
pleasing contrast, as he looked at tlie 
yellow coin in Miss Floyd’s porte-mon- 
naie. She poured the sovereigns into 
her own gloved palm, and then dropped 
the golden shower into Mr. Harrison’s 
hands, which were hollowed into a spe- 
cies of horny basin for the reception of 
her bounty. The great trunk of an oak 
screened them from the observation of 
Talbot and Lucy, as Aurora gave the 
man this money. 

“You have no claim on me,” she 
said, stopping him abruptly, as he began 
a declaration of his gratitude, “ and I 
protest against your making a market 
of any past events which have come un- 
der your knowledge. Remember, once 
and forever, that I am not afraid of you ; 
and that if I consent to assist you, it is 
because I will not have my father an- 
noyed. Let me have the address of 
some place where a letter may always 
find you — you can put it into an envel- 
ope and direct it to me here — and from 
time to time I promise to send you a 
moderate remittance; sufficient to ena- 
ble you to lead an honest life, if you or 
any of your set are capable of doing so ; 
but I repeat, that if I give you this 
money as a bribe, it is only for my fa- 
ther’s sake.” 

The man muttered some expression 
of thanks, looking at Aurora earnestly ; 
but there was a stern shadow upon the 
dark face that forbade any hope of con- 
ciliation. She was turning from him, 
followed by the mastiff, when the bandy- 
legged dog ran forward, whining and 
raising himself upon his hind legs to 
lick her hand. 


66 


AURORA FLOYD. 


The expression of her face underwent 
an immediate change. She shrank from 
the dog, and he looked at her for a mo- 
ment with a dim uncertainty in his 
blood-shot eyes ; then, as conviction 
stole upon the brute mind, he burst into 
a joyous bark, frisking and, capering 
about Miss Floyd’s silk dress, and im- 
printing dusty impressions of his fore 
paws upon the rich fabric. 

“ The pore hanimal knows yer, miss,” 
said the man deprecatingly j “ you was 
never ’aughty to ’im.” 

The mastiff Bow-wow made as if he 
would have torn up every inch of ground 
in Felden Woods at this juncture; but 
Aurora quieted him with a look. 

“Poor Boxer I”shesaid, “poorBoxerl 
so you know me, Boxer.” 

“ Lord, miss, there’s no knowin’ the 
faithfulness of them animals.” 

“ Poor Boxer ! I think I should like 
to have you. Would you sell him, Har- 
rison ?” 

The man shook his head. 

“No, miss,” he answered, “thank 
you kindly ; there ain’t much in the way 
of dawgs as I’d refuse to make a bar- 
gain about. If you wanted a mute 
spannel, or a Russian setter, or a Hile 
of Skye, I’d get him for you and wel- 
come, and ask nothin’ for my trouble ; 
but this here bull-terrier’s father and 
mother and wife and family to me, and 
there ain’t money enough in your pa’s 
bank to buy him, miss.” 

“Well, well,” said Aurora, relent- 
ingly, “I know how faithful he is. Send 
me the address, and don’t come to Fel- 
den again.” 

She returned to the carriage, and 
taking the reins from Talbot’s hand, 
gave the restless ponies their head ; the 
vehicle dashed past Mr. Matthew Har- 
rison, who stood hat in hand, with his 
dog between his legs, until the party had 
gone by. Miss Floyd stole a glance at 
her lover’s face, and saw that Captain 
Bulstrode’s countenance wore its darkest 
^pression. The officer kept sulky si- 
lence till they reached the house, when 
he handed the two ladies from the car- 
riage and followed them across the hall. 
Aurora was on the lowest step of the 
broad staircase before he spoke. 

“ Aurora,” he said, “ one word before 
you go up-stairs.” 

She turned and looked at him a little 


defiantly ; she was still very pale, and 
the fire with which her eyes had flashed 
upon Mr. Matthew Harrison, dog-fan- 
cier and rat-catcher, had not yet died 
out of the dark orbs. Talbot Bulstrode 
opened the door of a long chamber under 
the picture-gallery — half billiard-room, 
half library, and almost the pleasantest 
apartment in the house — and stood aside 
for Aurora to pass him. 

The young lady crossed the threshold 
as proudly as Marie Antoinette going to 
face her plebeian accusers. The room 
was empty. 

Miss Floyd seated herself in a low 
easy-chair by one of the two great fire- 
places, and looked straight at the blaze. 

“ I want to ask you about that man, 
Aurora,” Captain Bulstrode said, lean- 
ing over a prie-dieu chair, and playing 
nervously with the carved arabesques of 
the walnut-wood framework. 

“ About which man ?” 

This might have been prevarication 
in some ; from Aurora it was simply de- 
fiance, as Talbot knew. 

“ The man who spoke to you in the 
avenue just now. Who is he, and what 
was his business with you ?” Here Cap- 
tain Bulstrode fairly broke down. • He 
loved her, reader, he loved her, remem- 
ber, and he was a coward. A coward 
under the influence of that most cow- 
ardly of all passions. Love ! — the pas- 
sion that could leave a stain upon a Nel- 
son’s name ; the passion which might 
have made a dastard of the bravest of the 
three hundred at Thermopylae, or the six 
hundred at Balaklava. He loved her, 
this unhappy young man, and he began 
to stammer, and hesitate, and apologize, 
shivering under the angry light in her 
wonderful eyes. “ Believe me, Aurora, 
that I would not for the world play the 
spy upon your actions, or dictate to you 
the objects of your bounty. No, Au- 
rora, not if my right to do so were 
stronger than it is, and I were twenty 
times your husband ; but that man, that 
disreputable-looking fellow who spoke 
to you just now — I don’t think he is the 
sort of person you ought to assist.” 

“ I dare say not,” she said ; “ I have no. 
doubt I assist many people who ought 
by rights to die in a workhouse or drop 
on the high road; but, you see, if I 
stopped to question their deserts, they 
might die of starvation while I was 


AURORA FLOYD. 


making my inquiries; so perhaps it’s 
better to throw away a few shillings 
upon some unhappy creature who is 
wicked enough to be hungry, and not 
good enough to deserve to have any 
thing given him to eat.” 

There was a recklessness about this 
speech that jarred upon Talbot, but he 
could not very well take objection to it ; 
besides, it was leading away from the 
subject upon which he was so eager to 
be satisfied. 

“But that man, Aurora, who is he ?” 

“ A dog-fancier.” 

Talbot shuddered. 

“I thought he was something hor- 
rible,” he murmured; “but what, in 
heaven’s name could he want of you, 
Aurora ?” 

“ What most of my petitioners want,” 
she answered ; “ whether it’s the curate 
of a new chapel with medieval decora- 
tions, who wants to rival our Lady of 
Bons-secours upon one of the hills about 
Norwood; or a laundress, who has 
burnt a week’s washing, and wants the 
means to make it good ; or a lady of 
fashion, who is about to inaugurate a 
home for the children of indigent lucifer- 
matdh sellers ; or a lecturer upon politi- 
cal economy, or Shelley and Byron, or 
Charles Dickens and the modern hu- 
morists, who is going to hold forth at 
Croydon : they all want the same thing ; 
money I If I tell the curate that my 
principles are evangelical, and that I 
can’t pray sincerely if there are candle- 
sticks on the altar, he is not the less 
glad of my hundred pounds. If I inform 
the lady of fashion that I have peculiar 
opinions about the orphans of lucifer- 
match sellers, and cherish a theory of 
my own against the education of the 
masses, she will shrug her shoulders 
deprecatingly, but will take care to let 
me know that any donation Miss Floyd 
may be pleased to afford will be equally 
acceptable. If I told them that I had 
committed half-a-dozen murders, or that 
I had a silver statue of the winner of 
last year’s Derby erected on an altar in 
my dressing-room, and did daily and 
nightly homage to it, they would take 
my money and thank me kindly for it, 
as that man did just now.” 

“ But one word, Aurora : does the 
man belong to this neighborhood ?” 

^‘No.” 


67 

“ How, then, did you come to know 
him ?” 

She looked at him for a moment ; 
steadily, unflinchingly, with a thoughtful 
expression on that ever-changing coun- 
tenance ; looked as if she were mentally 
debating some point. Then rising sud- 
denly, she gathered her shawl about her, 
and walked towards the door. She 
paused upon the threshold, and said, 

“ This cross-questioning is scarcely 
pleasant. Captain Bulstrode. If I choose 
to give a five-pound note to any person 
who may ask me for it, I expect full 
license to do do, and I will not submit 
to be called to account for my actions — 
even by you.” 

“Aurora I” 

The tenderly reproachful tone struck 
her to the heart. 

“You may believe, Talbot,” she said, 
“you must surely believe that I know 
too well the value of your love to imperil 
it by word or deed — you must believe 
this.” 

♦ 

CHAPTER YIII. 

POOR JOHN MELLISII COMES BACK AGAIN. 

John Hellish grew weary of the 
great city of Paris. Better love, and 
contentment, and a crust in a mansardej 
than stalled oxen or other costly food 
in the loftiest saloons au premier, and 
with the most obsequious waiters to do 
us homage, and repress so much ns a 
smile at our insular idiom. He grew 
heartily weary of the Rue de Rivoli, the 
gilded railings of the Tuileries gardens, ^ 
and the leafless trees behind them. Ho 
was weary of the Place de la Concorde, 
and the Champs Elysees, and the rattle 
of the hoofs of the troop about his 
Imperial Highness’s carriage, when Na- 
poleon the Third or the baby prince 
took his airing. The plot was yet a- 
hatching which was to come so s^on to 
a climax in the Rue Lepelletier. He 
was tired of the broad Boulevards, and 
the theatres, and the cafes, and the 
glove-shops — tired of staring -at the 
jewellers’ windows in the Rue de la 
Paix, picturing to himself the face of 
Aurora Floyd under the diamond and 
emerald tiaras displayed therein. Ho 


AURORA FLOYD. 


68 

had serious thoughts at times of buying 
a stove and a basket of charcoal, and 
asphyxiating himself quietly in the great 
gilded saloon at Meurice’s. What was 
the use of his money, or his dogs, or his 
horses, or his broad acres ? All these 
put together would not purchase Aurora 
Floyd. What was the good of life, if it 
came to that, since the banker’s daughter 
refused to share it with him ? Re- 
member that this big, blue-eyed, curly- 
haired John Mellish had been from his 
cradle a spoiled child, — spoiled by poor 
relations and parasites, servants and 
toadies, from the first hour to the thir- 
tieth year of his existence, — and it 
seemed such a very hard thing that this 
beautiful woman should be denied to 
him. Had he been an eastern potentate, 
he would have sent for his vizier, and 
wo.uld have had that official bow-strung 
before his eyes, and so made an end of 
it ; but being merely a Yorkshire gentle- 
man and landowner, he had no more to 
do but to bear his burden quietly ! As 
if he had ever borne any thing quietly ! 
He flung half the weight of his grief upon 
his valet ; until that functionary dreaded 
the sound of Miss Floyd’s name, and 
told a fellow-servant in confidence that 
his master “ made such a howling about 
that young woman as he offered marriage 
to at Brighton, that there was no bear- 
ing him.” The end of it all was, that 
one night John Mellish gave sudden 
orders for the striking of his tents, and 
early the next morning departed for the 
Great Northern Railway, leaving only 
the ashes of his fires behind him. 

It was only natural to suppose that 
Mr. Mellish would have gone straight 
to bis country residence, where there 
was much business to be done by him ; 
foals to be entered for coming races, 
trainers and stable-boys to be settled 
with, the planning and laying down of 
a proposed tan-gallop to be carried out, 
and a racing stud awaiting the eye of 
the master. But instead of going from 
the Dover Railway Station to the Great 
Northern Hotel, eating his dinner, and 
starting for Doncaster by the express, 
Mr. Mellish drove to the Gloucester 
Coffee-house, and there took up his 
quarters, for the purpose, as he said, of 
seeing the Cattle-show. He made a 
melancholy pretense of driving to Baker 
Street in a Hansom cab, and roamed 


hither and thither for a quarter of an 
hour, staring dismally into the pens, and 
then fled away precipitately from the 
Yorkshire gentlemen-farmers, who gave 
him hearty greeting. He left the Glou- 
cester the next morning in a dog-cart, 
and drove straight to Beckenham. Archi- 
bald Floyd, who knew nothing of this 
young Yorkshireman’s declaration and 
rejection, had given him a hearty invi- 
tation to Felden Woods. Why shouldn’t 
he go there ? Only to make a morning 
call upon the hospitable banker ; not to 
see Aurora ; only to take a few long 
respirations of the air she breathed be- 
fore he went back to Yorkshire. 

Of course he knew nothing of Talbot 
Bulstrode’s happiness ; and it had been 
one of the chief consolations of his exile 
to remember that that gentleman had 
put forth in the same vessel, and had 
been ship\NTecked along with him. 

He was ushered into the billiard-room, 
where he found Aurora Floyd seated at 
a little table near the fire, making a 
pencil copy of a proof engraving of one 
of Rosa Bonheur’s pictures, while Talbot 
Bulstrode sat by her side preparing her 
pencils. 

We feel instinctively that the man 
who cuts lead-pencils, or holds a skein 
of silk upon his outstretched hands, or 
carries lap-dogs, opera-cloaks, camp- 
stools, or parasols, is “engaged.” Even 
John Mellish had learned enough to 
know this. He breathed a sigh so loud 
as to be heard by Lucy and her mother 
seated by the other fireplace, — a sigh 
that was on the verge of a groan, — and 
then held out his hand to Miss Floyd. 
Not to Talbot Bulstrode. He had 
vague memories of Roman legends 
floating in his brain, legends of super- 
human generosity and classic self-abne- 
gation ; but he could not have shaken 
hands with that dark-haired young Corn- 
ish man, though the tenure of the Mellish 
estate had hung upon the sacrifice. He 
could not do it. He seated himself a 
few paces from Aurora and her lover, 
twisting his hat about in his hot, nervous 
hands until the brim was well-nigh limp ; 
and was powerless to utter one sentence, 
even so much as some poor pitiful 
remark about the weather. 

He was a great spoiled baby of thirty 
years of age ; and I am afraid that, if 
the stern truth must be told, he saw 


AURORA FLOYD. 


69 


Aurora Floyd across a mist, that blurred 
and distorted the bright face before his 
eyes. Lucy Floyd came to his relief, 
by carrying him olf to introduce him to 
her mother ; and kind-hearted Mrs. 
Alexander was delighted with his frank, 
fair English face. He had the good 
fortune to stand with his back to the 
light, so that neither of the ladies de- 
tected that foolish mist in his blue eyes. 

Archibald Floyd would not hear of 
his visitor’s returning to town either 
that night or the next day. 

“You must spend Christmas with 
us,” he said, “and see the New Year 
in, before you go back to Yorkshire. I 
have all my children about me at this 
season, and it is the only time that 
Felden seems like an old man’s home. 
Your friend Biilstrode stops with us” 
(Mellish winced as he received this in- 
telligence), “and I sha’n’t think it 
friendly if you refuse to join our party.” 

What a pitiful coward this John 
Mellish must have been to accept the 
banker’s invitation, and send the Newton 
Pagnell back to the Gloucester, and 
suffer himself to be led away by Mr. 
Floyd’s own man to a pleasant chamber, 
a few doors from the chintz-rooms oc- 
cupied by Talbot! But I have said 
before, that love is a cowardly passion. 
It is like the toothache ; the bravest and 
strongest succumb to it, and 'howl aloud 
under the torture. I don’t suppose the 
Iron Duke would have been ashamed to 
own that he objected to having his teeth 
out. I have heard of a great fighting 
man who could take punishment better 
^an any other of the genii of the ring, 
but who fainted away at the first grip 
of the dentist’s forceps. John Mellisli 
consented to- stay at Felden, and he 
went between the lights into Talbot’s 
dressing-room, to expostulate with the 
captain upon his treachery. 

Talbot did his best to console his 
doleful visitant. 

“ There are more women than one in 
the world,” he said, after John had un- 
bosomed himself of his grief — he didn’t 
think this, the hypocrite, though he said 
it — “ there are more women than one, 
my dear Mellish, and many very charm- 
ing and estimable girls, who would be 
glad to win the affections of such a 
fellow as you.” 

“I hate estimable girls,” said Mr. 


Mellish ; “ bother my affections, nobody 
will ever win my affections ; but I love 
her, I love that beautiful black-eyed 
creature down-stairs, who looks at you 
with two flashes of lightning, and rides 
so well ; I love her, Bulstrode, and you 
told me that she’d refused you, and that 
you were going to leave Brighton by 
the eight o’clock express, and you 
didn’t, and you sneaked back and made 
her a second offer, and she accepted 
you, and, damme, it wasn’t fair play.” 

Having said which, Mr. Mellish flung 
himself upon a chair, which creaked 
under his weight, and fell to poking the 
fire furiously. 

It was hard for poor Talbot to have 
j to excuse himself for having won Au- 
rora’s hand. He could not very well 
remind John Mellish that if Miss Floyd 
had accepted him, it was perhaps 
because she preferred him to the honest 
Yorkshireman. To John the matter 
never presented itself in this light. The 
spoiled child had been cheated out of 
that toy above all other toys, upon the 
possession of which he had set his 
foolish heart. It was as if he had 
bidden for some crack horse at Tatter- 
sail’s, in fair and open competition with 
a friend, who had gone back after the 
sale to outbid him in some underhand 
fashion. He could not understand that 
there had been no dishonesty in Talbot’s 
conduct, and he was highly indignant 
when that gentleman ventured to hint to 
him that perhaps, on the whole, it would 
have been wiser to have kept away from 
Felden Woods. 

Talbot Bulstrode had avoided any 
further allusion to Mr. Matthew Harri- 
son the dog-fancier ; and this, the first 
dispute between the lovers, had ended 
in the triumph of Aurora. 

Miss Floyd was not a little embar- 
rassed by the presence of John Mellish, 
who roamed disconsolately about the 
big rooms, seating himself ever and 
anon at one of the tables to peer into 
the lenses of a stereoscope, or to take 
up some gorgeously bound volume and 
drop it on the carpet in gloomy absence 
of mind, and who .sighed heavily when 
spoken to, and was altogether far from 
pleasant company. Aurora’s warm heart 
was touched by the piteous spectacle of 
this rejected lover, and she sought him 
out once or twice, and talked to him 


AURORA FLOYD. 


70 

about his racing stud, and asked him 
how he liked the hunting in Surrey ; 
but John changed from red to white, 
and from hot to cold, when she spoke 
to him, and fled away from her with a 
scared and ghastly aspect, which would 
have been grotesque had it not been so 
painfully real. 

But by and by John found a more 
pitiful listener to his sorrows than ever 
Talbot Bulstrode had been; and this 
gentle and compassionate listener was 
no other than Lucy Floyd, to whom the 
big Yorkshireman turned in his trouble. 
Did he know, or did he guess, by some 
wondrous clairvoyance, that her griefs 
bore a common likeness to his own, and 
that she was just the one person, of all 
others, at Felden Woods, to be pitiful 
to him and patient with him. He was 
by no means proud, this transparent, 
boyish, babyish good fellow. Two days 
after his arrival at Felden, he told all to 
poor Lucy. 

“ I suppose you know, Mi-ss Floyd,” 
he said, “that your cousin rejected me. 
Yes, of course yon do ; I believe she 
rejected Bulstrode about the same time ; 
but some men haven’t a ha’porth of 
pride; I must say I think the Captain 
acted like a sneak.” 

A sneak 1 Her idol, her adored, her 
demi-god, her dark-haired and gray- 
eyed divinity, to be spoken of thus ! 
She turned upon Mr. Mellish with her 
fair cheeks flushed into a pale glow of 
anger, and told him that Talbot had a 
right to do what he had done, and that 
whatever Talbot did was right. 

Like most men whose reflective facul- 
ties are entirely undeveloped, John Mel- 
lish was blessed with a sufficiently rapid 
perception ; a perception sharpened just 
then by that peculiar sympathetic pre- 
science, that marvellous clairvoyance of 
which I Have spoken ; and in those few 
indignant words, and that angry flush, 
he read poor Lucy’s secret : she loved 
Talbot Bulstrode as he loved Aurora — 
hopelessly. 

How he admired this fragile girl I 
who was frightened of horses and dogs, 
and who shivered if a breath of the win- 
ter air blew across the heated hall, and 
who yet bore her burden with this quiet, 
uncomplaining patience ; while he, who 
weighed fourteen stone, and could ride 
forty miles across country with the bit- 


terest blasts of December blowing on 
his face, was powerless to endure his 
affliction. It comforted him to watch 
Lucy, and to read in those faint signs 
{Jnd tokens, which had escaped even a 
mother’s eye, the sad history of her un- 
requited affection. 

Poor John was too good-natured and 
unselfish to hold out for ever in the 
dreary fortress of despair which he had 
built up for his habitation ; and on 
Christmas-eve, when there were certain 
rejoicings at Felden, held in especial 
honor of the younger visitors, he gave 
way, and joined in their merriment, and 
was more boyish than the youngest of 
them, burning his fingers with blazing 
raisins, suffering his eyes to be bandaged 
at the will of noisy little players at 
blind-man’s-buff, undergoing ignomin- 
ious penalties in their games of for- 
feits, performing alternately inn-keepers, 
sheriff’s ofBcers, policemen, clergymen, 
and justices, in the acted charades, lift- 
ing the little ones who wanted to see 
“ de top of de Kitmat tee” in his sturdy 
arms, and making himself otherwise 
agreeable and useful to young people 
of from three to fifteen years of age; 
until at last, under the influence of all 
this juvenile gaiety, and perhaps two or 
three glasses of Moselle, he boldly kissed 
Aurora Floyd beneath the branch of 
mistletoe hanging, “for this night only,’^ 
in the great hall at Felden Woods. 

And having done this, Mr. Mellish 
fairly lost his wits, and was “ off his 
head” for the rest of the evening ; mak- 
ing speeches to the little ones at the 
supper-table, and proposing Mr. Archi- 
bald Floyd and the commercial interests 
of Great Britain, with three times three ; 
leading the chorus of those liny treble 
voices with his own sonorous bass ; and 
weeping freely — he never quite knew 
why — behind his table-napkin. It was 
through an atmosphere of tears, and 
sparkling wines, and gas, and hot-house 
flowers, that he saw Aurora Floyd, look- 
ing, ah, how lovely, in those simple 
robes of white which so much became 
her, and with a garland of artificial 
holly round her head. The spiked 
leaves and the scarlet berries formed 
themselves into a crown — I think, in- 
deed, that a cheese-plate would have 
been transformed into a diadem, if Miss 
Floyd had been pleased to put it on her 


AURORA FLOYD. 


71 


head — and she looked like the genius of 
Christmas : something bright and beau- 
tiful ; too beautiful to come more than 
once a year. 

When the clocks were striking 2 A. M., 
long after the little ones had been car- 
ried away muffled up in opera-cloaks, 
terribly sleepy, and I’m afraid in some 
instances under the influence of strong 
drink — when the elder guests had all 
retired to rest, and the lights, with a 
few exceptions, were fled, the garlands 
dead, and all but Talbot and John Hel- 
lish departed — the two young men walk- 
ed up and down the long billiard-room, 
in the red glow of the two declining 
fires, and talked to each other confi- 
dentially. It was the morning of Christ- 
mas-day, and it would have been strange 
to be unfriendly at such a lime. 

*‘If you’d fallen in love with the other 
one, Bulstrode,” said John, clasping his. 
old schoolfellow by the hand, and star- 
ing at him pathetically, “ I could have 
looked upon you as a brother ; she’s 
better suited to you, twenty thousand 
times better adapted to you than her 
cousin, and you ought to have married 
her — in common courtesy — I mean to 
say as an honorable — having very much 
compromised yourself by your attentions 
— Mrs. Whatsheruarae — the compan- 
ion — Mrs. Powell — said so — you ought 
to have married her.” 

“ Married her ! Married whom ?” 
cried Talbot rather savagely, shaking 
off his friend’s hot grasp, and allowing 
Mr. Hellish to sway backward upon the 
heels of his varnished boots in rather an 
alarming manner. '' Who do you mean ?” 

** The sweetest girl in Christendom — 
except one,” exclaimed John, clasi)ing 
his hot hands and elevating his dim 
blue eyes to the ceiling; “the loveliest 
girl in Christendom, except one — Lucy 
Floyd I” 

“ Lucy Floyd !” 

“ Yes, Lucy ; the sweetest girl in — ” 

“ Wlio says that I ought to marry 
Lucy Floyd 

“ She says so — no, no, I don’t mean 
that! I mean-,” said Mr. Hellish, sinking 
his voice to a solemn whisper, — “I mean 
that Lucy Floyd loves you ! She didn’t 
tell me so — oh, no, bless your soul, — she 
never uttered a word upon the subject ; 
but she loves you. Yes,” continued; 
John, pushing his friend away from him i 


with both hands, and staring at him as 
if mentally taking his pattern for a suit 
of clothes, “ that girl loves you, and has 
loved you all along. I am not a fool, 
and I give you my word and honor that 
Lucy Floyd loves you.” 

“Not a fool 1” cried Talbot; “you’re 
worse than a fool, John Mellish — you’re 
drunk !” 

He turned upon his heel contemptu- 
ously, and taking a candle from a table 
near the door, lighted it, and strode out 
of the room. 

John stood rubbing his hands through 
his curly hair, and staring helplessly af- 
ter the captain. 

“ This is the reward a fellow gets for 
doing a generous thing,” he said, as he 
thrust his own candle into the burning 
coals, ignoring any easier mode of light- 
ing it. “ It’s hard, but I suppose it’s 
human nature. 

Talbot* Bulstrode went to bed in a 
very bad humor. Could it be true that 
Lucy loved him ? Could this chattering 
Yorkshireraan have discovered a secret 
which had escaped the captain’s pene- 
tration ? He remembered how, only a 
short time before, he had vyished that this 
fair-haired girl might fall in love with 
him, and now all was trouble and con- 
fusion. Guinevere was lady of his heart, 
and poor Elaine was sadly in the way. 
Mr. Tennyson’s wondrous book had not 
been given to the world in the year fifty- 
seven, or no doubt poor Talbot would 
have compared himself to the knight 
whose “honor rooted in dishonor stood.” 
Had hcf been dishonorable ? Had he 
compromised himself by his attentions 
to Lucy ? Had he deceived that fair 
and gentle creature ? The down pillows 
in the chintz chamber gave no rest to' 
his weary head that night; and when he 
fell asleep in the late daybreak, it was to 
dream horrible dreams, and to see in a 
vision Aurora Floyd standing on the 
brink of a clear pool of water in a woody 
recess at Felden, and pointing down 
through its crystal surface to the corpse 
of Lucy, lying pale and still amidst lilies 
and clustering aquatic plants, whose long 
tendrils entwined themselves with the 
fair golden hair. 

He heard the splash of the water ia 
that terrible dream, and awoke, to find 
; his valet breaking the ice in his bath in 
! the adjoining room. His perplexities 


AURORA FLOYD. 


72 

about poor Lucy vanished in the broad 
daylight, and he laughed at a trouble 
which must have grown out of his own 
vanity. What was he, that young ladies 
should fall in love with him ? What a 
weak fool he must have been to have 
believed for one moment in the drunken 
babble of John Mellish 1 So he dis- 
missed the image of Aurora’s cousin 
from his mind, and had eyes, ears, and 
thought only for Aurora herself, who 
drove him to Beckenham church in her 
basket-carriage, and sat by his side in 
the banker’s great square pew. 

Alas, I fear he heard very little of the 
sermon that was preached that day ; but, 
for all that, I declare that he was a good 
and devout man ; a man whom God had 
blest with the gift of earnest belief ; a 
man who took all blessings from the 
hand of God reverently, almost fearfully ; 
and as he bowed his head at the end of 
that Christmas service of rejoicing and 
thanksgiving, he thanked Heaven for his 
overflowing cup of gladness, and prayed 
that he might become worthy of so much 
happiness. 

He had a vague fear that he was too 
happy : too much bound np heart and 
soul in the dark-eyed woman by his side. 
If she were to die I If she were to be 
false to him I He turned sick and dizzy 
at the thought ; and even in that sacred 
temple the Devil whispered to him that 
there were still pools, loaded pistols, and 
other certain remedies for such calamities 
as those, — so wicked as well as cowardly 
a passion is this terrible fever. Love I 

The day was bright and clear, the 
light snow whitening the ground ; every 
line of hedge-top and tree cut sharply 
out against the cold blue of the winter 
sky. The bafiker proposed that they 
should send home the carriages, and 
walk down the hill to Felden ; so Talbot 
Bulstrode offered Aurora his arm, only 
too glad of the chance of a tHe-d-ttte 
with his betrothed. 

John Mellish walked with Archibald 
Floyd, with whom the Yorkshireman 
was an especial favorite ; and Lucy was 
lost amid a group of brothers, sisters, 
cousins, aunts, and uncles. 

“We were so busy all yesterday with 
the little people,” said Talbot, “ that I 
forgot to tell you, Aurora, that I had 
a letter from my mother.” 

Miss Floyd looked up at him with 


her brightest glance. She was always 
pleased to hear any thing about Lady 
Bulstrode. 

“Of course there is very little news in 
the letter,” added Talbot, “for there is 
rarely much to tell at Bulstrode. And 
yet — yes — there is one piece of news 
which concerns yourself.” 

“Which concerns me ?” 

“Yes. You remember my cousin, 
Constance Trevyllian ?” 

“ Y-es — ” 

“ She has returned from Paris, her 
education finished at last, and she, I be- 
lieve, all-accomplished, and has gone to 
spend Christmas at Bulstrode. Good 
heavens, Aurora I what is the matter ?” 

Nothing very much, apparently. Her 
face had grown as white as a sheet of 
letter-paper ; but the hand upon his arm 
did not tremble. Perhaps, had he taken 
especial notice of it, he would have found 
it preternaturally still. 

“Aurora, what is the matter ?” 

“Nothing. Why do you ask?” 

“Your face is as pale as — ” 

“ It is the cold, I suppose,” she said, 
shivering. “ Tell me about your cousin, 
this Miss Trevyllian ; when did she go 
to Bulstrode Castle ?” 

“ She was to arrive the day before 
yesterday. My mother was expecting 
her when she wrote.” 

“ Is she a favorite of Lady Bul- 
strode’s ?” 

“No very especial favorite. My mo- 
ther likes her well enough ; but Con- 
stance is rather a frivolous girl.” 

“ The day before yesterday,” said Au- 
rora; “Miss Trevyllian was to arrive 
the day before yesterday. The letters 
from Cornwall are delivered at Felden 
early in the afternoon ; are they not ?” 

“Yes, dear.” 

“You will have a letter from your 
mother to-day, Talbot ?” 

“A letter to-day 1 oh, no, Aurora, 
she never writes two days running ; sel- 
dom more than once a week.” 

Miss Floyd did not make any answer 
to this, nor did her face regain its natu- 
ral hue during the whole of the home- 
ward walk. She was very silent, only 
replying in the briefest manner to Tal- 
bot’s inquiries. 

“ I am sure that you are ill, Aurora,” 
he said, as they ascended the terrace- 
1 steps. 


AURORA FLOYD. 


“ I am ill” 

“Bnt, dearest, what is it? Let me 
tell Mrs. Alexander, or Mrs. Powell. 
Let me go back to Beckenham for the 
doctor.” 

She looked at him with a mournful 
earnestness in her eyes. 

“ My foolish Talbot,” she said, “ do 
you remember what Macbeth said to hin 
doctor? There are diseases that cannot 
be ministered to. Let me alone ; you 
will know soon enough — you will know 
very soon, I dare say.” 

“ But, Aurora, what do you mean by 
this ? What can there be upon your 
mind ?” 

“ Ah, what indeed ! Let me alone, 
let me alone. Captain Bulstrode.” 

He had caught her hand ; but she 
broke from him, and ran up the stair- 
case, in the direction of her own apart- 
ments. 

Talbot hurried to Lucy with a pale, 
frightened face. 

“Your cousin is ill, Lucy,” he said ; 
“ go to her, for Heaven’s sake, and see 
what is wrong.” 

Lucy obeyed immediately ; but she 
fouivd the door of Miss Floyd’s room 
locked against her; and when she called 
to Aurora and implored to be admitted, 
that young lady cried out, 

“ Go away, Lucy Floyd ; go away, 
and leave me to myself, unless you want 
to drive me mad I” 


CHAPTER IX 

HOW TALBOT BULSTRODE SPENT HIS 
CHRISTMAS. 

There was no more happiness for 
Talbot Bulstrode that day. He wan- 
dered from room to room, till he was as 
weary of that exercise as the young lady 
in Monk Lewis’s Castle Spectre; he 
roamed forlornly hither and thither, hop- 
ing to find Aurora, now in the billiard- 
room, now in the drawiBg-room. He 
loitered in the hall, upon the shallow 
pretence of looking at barometers and 
thermometers, in order to listen for the 
opening and shutting of Aurora’s door. 
All the doors at Felden Woods were 
perpetually opening and shutting that 


73 

afternoon, as it seemed to Talbot Bul- 
strode. He had no excuse for passing 
the doors of Miss Floyd’s apartments, 
for his own rooms lay at the opposite 
angle of the house ; but he lingered on 
the broad staircase, looking at the fur- 
niture-pictures upon the walls, and not 
seeing one line in these Wardour-Street 
productions. He had - hoped that Au- 
rora would appear at luncheon ; but 
that dismal meal had been eaten without 
her ; and the merry laughter and pleas- 
ant talk of the family assembly had 
sounded far away to Talbot’s ears — far 
away across some wide ocean of doubt 
and confusion. 

He passed the afternoon in this 
wretched manner, unobserved by any 
one but Lucy, who watched him fur- 
tively from her distant seat, as he 
roamed in and out of the drawing-room. 
Ah, how many a man is watched by lov- 
ing eyes whose light he never sees I how 
many a man is cared for by a tender 
heart whose secret he never learns I A 
little after dusk, Talbot Bulstrode went 
to his room to dress. It was some time 
before the bell would ring ; but he would 
dress early, he thought, so as to make 
sure of being in the drawing-room when 
Aurora came down. 

He took no light with him, for there 
were always wax-candles upon the chim- 
ney-piece in his room. 

It was almost dark in that pleasant 
chintz chamber, for the fire had been 
lately replenished, and there was no 
blaze: but he could just distinguish a 
white patch upon the green-cloth cover 
of the writing-table. The white patch 
was a letter. He stirred the black mass 
of coal in the grate, and a bright flame 
went dancing up the chimney, making < 
the room as light as day. He took the 
letter in one hand, while he lighted one 
of the candles on the chimney-piece with 
the other. The letter was from his mo- 
ther. Aurora Floyd had told him that 
he would receive such a letter. What 
did it all mean ? The gay flowers and 
birds upon the papered walls spun round 
him as he tore open the envelope. I 
firmly believe that we have a serai-su- 
pernatural prescience of the coming of 
all misfortune ; a prophetic instinct, 
which tells us that such a letter, or such 
a messenger, carries evil tidings. Tal- 
bot Bulstrode had that prescience as ho 


AURORA FLOYD. 


74 

unfolded the paper in his hands. The 
horrible trouble was before him ; a 
brooding shadow, with a Teiled face, 
ghastly and undefined ; but it was there. 

“ My dear Talbot, — I know that the 
letter I am about to write will distress 
and perplex you ; but ray duty lies not 
the less plainly before me. I fear that 
your heart is much involved in your 
engagement to Miss Floyd.” The evil 
tidings concerned Aurora, then ; the 
brooding shadow was slowly lifting its 
dark veil, and the face of her he loved 
best on earth appeared behind it. “ But 
I know,” continued that pitiless letter, 
“ that the sense of honor is the strongest 
part of your nature, and that, however 
you may have loved this girl” (0 God, 
she spoke of his love in the past!), 

you will not suffer yourself to be en- 
trapped into a false position through 
any weakness of affection. There is 
some mystery about the life of Aurora 
Floyd.” 

This sentence was at the bottom of 
the first page ; and before Talbot Bul- 
strode’s shaking hand could turn the 
leaf, every doubt, every fear, every pre- 
sentiment he had ever felt, flashed back 
upon him with preternatural distinct- 
ness. 

“ Constance Trevyllian came here yes- 
terday ; and you may imagine that in 
the course of the evening you were 
spoken of, and your engagement dis- 
cussed.” 

A curse upon their frivolous woman’s 
gossip I Talbot crushed the letter in 
his hand, and was about to fling it from 
him ; but, no, it must be read. The 
shadow of doubt must be faced, and 
wrestled with, and vanquished, or there 
was no more peace upon this earth for 
him. He went on reading the letter. 

“ I told Constance that Miss Floyd 
had been educated in the Rue St. Domi- 
nique, and asked if she remembered her. 
‘Whatl’ she said, ‘is it the Miss Floyd 
whom there was such a fuss about ? the 
Miss Floyd who ran away from school V 
And then she told me, Talbot, that a 
Miss Floyd was brought to the Des- 
moiselles Lespard by her father last 
June twelvemonth, and that less than a 
fortnight after arriving at the school 
she disappeared ; her disappearance, of 
course, causing a great sensation and 
an immense deal of talk among the other 


pupils, as it was said she had run away. 
The matter was hushed up as much as 
possible ; but you know that girls will 
talk, and from what Constance tells me, 
I imagine that very unpleasant things 
were said about Miss Floyd. Now you 
say that the banker’s daughter only re- 
turned to Felden Woods in September 
last. Where was she in the interval 

He read no more. One glance told 
him that the rest of the letter consisted 
of motherly cautions, and admonitions 
as to how he was to act in this perplex- 
ing business. 

He thrust the crumpled paper into 
his bosom, and dropped into a chair by 
the hearth. 

It was so, then I There was a mys- 
tery in the life of this woman. The 
doubts and suspicions, the undefined 
fears and perplexities, which had held 
him back at the first, and caused him to 
wrestle against his love, had not been 
unfounded. There was good reason for 
them all, ample reason for them ; as 
there is for every instinct which Provi- 
dence puts into our hearts. A black 
wall rose up round about him, and shut 
him for ever from the woman he loved ; 
this woman whom he loved, so far from 
wisely, so fearfully well ; this woman, 
for whom he had thanked God in the 
church only a few hours before. And 
she was to have been his wife ; the 
mother of his children, perhaps. He 
clasped his cold hands over his face and 
sobbed aloud. Do not despise him for 
those drops of anguish ; they were the 
virgin tears of his manhood. Never 
since infancy had his eyes been wet be- 
fore. God forbid that such tears as 
those should be shed more than once in 
a lifetime. The agony of that moment 
was not to be lived through twice. The 
hoarse sobs rent and tore his breast as 
if his flesh had been hacked by a rusty 
sword ; and when he took his wet hands 
from his face, he wondered that they 
were not red ; for it seemed to him as 
if he had been weeping blood. What 
should he do ? 

Go to Aurora, and ask her the mean- 
ing of that letter? Yes; the course 
was plain enough. A tumult of hope 
rushed back upon him, and swept away 
his terror. Why was he so ready to 
doubt her? What a pitiful coward he 
was to suspect her — to suspect this girl, 


AURORA 

whose transparent soul had been so 
freely unveiled to him ; whose every ac- 
cent was truth I For in his intercourse 
with Aurora, the quality which he had 
learned most to reverence in her nature 
was its sublime candor. He almost 
laughed at the recollection of his mo- 
ther’s solemn letter. It was so like 
these simple country-people, whose lives 
had been bounded by the narrow limits 
of a Cornish village — it was so like them 
to make mountains out of the veriest 
mole-hills. What was there so wonder- 
ful in that which bad occurred ? The 
spoiled child, the wilful heiress, had 
grown tired of a foreign school, and had 
run away. Her father, not wishing the 
girlish escapade to be known, had placed 
her somewhere else, and had kept her 
folly a secret. What was there from 
first to last in the whole affair that was 
not perfectly natural and probable, the 
exceptional circumstances of the case 
duly considered ? 

He could fancy Aurora, with her 
cheeks in a flame, and her eyes flashing 
lightning, flinging a page of blotted 
exercises into the face of her French 
master, and running out of the school- 
room, amid a tumult of ejaculatory bab- 
ble. The beautiful, impetuous creature ! 
There is nothing a man cannot admire 
in the woman he loves, and Talbot was 
half inclined to admire Aurora for hav- 
ing run away from school. 

The first dinner-bell had rung during 
Captain Bulstrode’s agony ; so the cor- 
ridors and rooms w'ere deserted when he 
went to look for Aurora, with his mo- 
ther’s letter in his breast. 

She was not in the billiard-room or 
the drawing-room, but he found her at 
last in a little inner chamber at the end 
of the house, with a bay-window looking 
out over the park. The room was dimly 
lighted by a shaded lamp, and Miss 
Floyd was seated in the uncurtained 
window, with her elbow resting ou a 
cushioned ledge, looking out at the 
steel-cold wintry sky and the whitened 
landscape. She was dressed in black; 
her face, neck, and arms gleaming mar- 
ble-white against the sombre hue of her 
dress ; and her attitude was as still as 
that of a statue. 

She neither stirred nor looked round 
when Talbot entered the room. 


FLOYD. 75 

“ My dear Aurora,” he said, “ I have 
been looking for you every where.” 

She shivered at the sound of his voice. 

“ You wanted to see me ?” 

“ Yes, dearest. I want you to explain 
something to me. A foolish business 
enough, no doubt, my darling, and, of 
course, very easily explained ; but, as 
your future husband, I have a right to 
ask for an explanation ; and I know, I 
know, Aurora, that you will give it in 
all candor.” 

She did not speak, although Talbot 
paused for some moments, awaiting her 
answer. He could only see her profile, 
dimly lighted by the wintry sky. He 
could not see the mute pain, the white 
anguish, in that youthful face. 

“I have had a letter from my mother, 
and there is something in that letter 
which 1 wish you to explain. Shall I 
read it to you, dearest ?” 

His voice faltered upon the endearing 
expression, and he remembered after- 
wards that it was the last time he had 
ever addressed her with a lover’s tender- 
ness. The day came when she had need 
of his compassion, and when he gave it 
freely ; hut that moment sounded the 
death-knell of Love. In that moment 
the gulf yawned, and the cliffs were rent 
asunder. 

“ Shall I read you the letter, Au- 
rora 

“ If you please.” 

He took the crumpled epistle from his 
bosom, and, bending over the lamp, read 
it aloud to Aurora. He fully expected 
at every sentence that she would inter- 
rupt him with some eager explanation ; 
but she was silent until he had finished, 
and even then she did not speak. 

“Aurora, Aurora, is this true?” 

“Perfectly true.” 

“ But why did you run away from the 
Rue St. Dominique?” 

“I cannot tell you.” 

“And where were you between the 
months of June in the year fifty-six and 
last September ?” 

“ I cannot tell you, Talbot Bulstrode. 
This is my secret, which I cannot tell 
you.” 

“You cannot tell me I There is up- 
wards of a year missing from your life ; 
and you cannot tell me, your betrothed 
husband, what you did with that year ?” 


76 


AURORA FLOYD. 


I cannot.” I 

“ Then, Aurora Floyd, you can never 
be my wife.” 

He thought that she would turn upon 
him, sublime in her indignation and fury, 
and that the explanation he longed for 
would burst from her lips in a passionate 
torrent of angry words ; but she rose 
from her chair, and, tottering towards 
him, fell upon her knees at his feet. No 
other action could have struck such ter- 
ror to his heart. It seemed to him a 
confession of guilt. But what guilt ? 
what guilt ? "^Hiat was the dark secret 
of this young creature’s brief life ? 

“ Talbot Bulstrode,” she said, in 
a tremulous voice, which cut him to 
the soul, — “Talbot Bulstrode, Heaven 
knows how often I have foreseen and 
dreaded this hour. Had I not been a 
coward, I should have anticipated this 
explanation. But I thought — I thought 
the occasion might never come; or that 
when it did come you would be gener- 
ous — and — trust me. If you can trust 
m5, Talbot ; if you can believe that this 
secret is not utterly shameful — ” 

“ Not utterly shameful !” he cried. 
“ 0 God ! Aurora, that I should ever 
hear you talk like this 1 Do you think 
there are any degrees in these things ? 
There must be no secret between ray 
wife and me ; and the day that a secret, 
or the shadow of one, arises between us, 
must see us part for ever. Rise from 
your knees, Aurora ; you are killing me 
with this shame and humiliation. Rise 
from your knees ; and if we are to part 
this moment, tell me, tell me, for pity’s 
sake, that I have no need to despise 
myself for having loved you with an in- 
tensity which has scarcely been manly.” 

She did not obey him, but saiik lower 
in her half-kneeling, half-crouching at- 
titude, her face buried in her hands, and 
only the coils of her black hair visible to 
Captain Bulstrode. 

“I was motherless from my cradle, 
Talbot,” she said, in a half-stifled voice. 
“ Have pity upon me.” 

“Pity I” echoed the captain ; 

Why do you not ask me for justice f 
One question, Aurora Floyd ; one more 
question ; perhaps the last I ever may 
ask of you. Does your father know 
why you left that school, and where you 
were during that twelvemonth ?” 

“ He does.” 


I “ Thank God, at least, for that I Tell 
me, Aurora, then, only tell me this, and 
I will believe your simple word as I 
would the oath of another woman. Tell 
me if he approved of your motive in 
leaving that school ; if he approved of 
the manner in which your life was spent 
during that twelvemonth. If you can 
say yes, Aurora, there shall be no more 
questions between us, and I can make 
you without fear my loved and honored 
wife.” 

“I cannot,” she answered. “I am 
only nineteen ; but within the two last 
years of my life I have done enough to 
break my father’s heart ; to break the 
heart of the dearest father that ever 
breathed the breath of life.” 

“Then all is over between us. God 
forgive you, Aurora Floyd ; but by your 
own confession you are no fit wife for an 
honorable man. I shut my mind against 
all foul suspicions ; but the past life of 
ray wife must be a white unblemished 
page, which all the world may be free 
to read.” 

He walked towards the door, and 
then, returning, assisted the wretched 
girl to rise, and led her back to her seat 
by the window, courteously, as if she 
had been his partner at a ball. Their 
hands met with as icy a touch as the 
hands of two corpses. Ah, how much 
there was of death in that touch 1 How 
much had died between those two within 
the last few hours 1 — hope, confidence, 
security, love, happiness, all that makes 
life worth the holding. 

Talbot Bulstrode paused upon the 
threshold of the little chamber, and spoke 
once more. 

“ I shall have left Felden in half an 
hour. Miss Floyd,” he said ; “ it will be 
better to allow your father to suppose 
that the disagreement between us has 
arisen from something of a trifling na- 
ture, and that my dismissal has come 
from you. I shall write to Mr. Floyd 
from London, and, if you please, I will 
so word my letter as to lead him to think 
this.” 

“You are very good,” she answered. 
“Yes, I would rather he should think 
that. It may spare him pain. Heaven 
knows I have cause to be grateful for 
any thing that will do that.” 

Talbot bowed and left the room, cloa- 
I ing the door behind him. The closing 


AURORA FLOYD. 


77 


of* that door had a dismal sound to his 
ear. He thought of some frail young 
creature abandoned by her sister nuns in 
a living tomb. He thought that he 
would rather have left Aurora lying 
rigidly beautiful in her coffiu than as he 
was leaving her to-day. 

The jangling, jarring sound of the 
second dinner-bell clanged out, as he 
went from the semi-obscurity of the cor- 
ridor into the glaring gaslight of the 
billiard-room. He met Lucy Floyd 
coming towards him in her rustling silk 
dinner-dress, with fringes and laces and 
ribbons and jewels fluttering and spark- 
ling about her ; and he almost hated her 
for looking so bright and radiant, re- 
membering, as he did, the ghastly flice 
of the stricken creature he had just left. 
We are apt to be horribly unjust in the 
hour of supreme trouble; and I fear that 
if any one had had the temerity to ask 
Talbot Bulstrode’s opinion of Lucy 
Floyd just at that moment, the Captain 
would have declared her to be a mass 
of frivolity and affectation. If you dis- 
cover the worthlessness of the only wo- 
man you love upon earth, you will per- j 
haps be apt to feel maliciously disposed 
towards the many estimable people about ! 
you. You are savagely inclined, when 
you remember that they for wliora you ; 
care nothing are so good, while she on ‘ 
whom you set your soul is so wicked, i 
The vessel which you freighted with | 
every hope of your heart has gone | 
down, and you are angry at the very | 
sight of those other ships riding so gal- ; 
lautly before the breeze. Lucy recoiled 
at the aspect of the young man’s face. 

“ What is it ?” she asked ; “ what has 
happened. Captain Bulstrode 

“Nothing — I have received a letter 
from Cornwall which obliges me to — ” 

His hollow voice died away into a 
hoarse whisper before he could finish the 
sentence. 

“ Lady Bulstrode — or Sir John — is 
ill perhaps ?” hazarded Lucy. 

Talbot pointed to his white lips and 
shook his head. The gesture might 
mean any thing. He could not speak. 
The hall was full of visitors and children 
going in to dinner. The little people 
were to dine with their seniors that day, 
as an especial treat and privilege of the 
season. The door of the dining-room 
was open, and Talbot saw the gray head 


of Archibald Floyd dimly visible at the 
end of a long vista of lights and silver 
and glass and evergreens. The old man 
had his nephews and nieces and their 
children grouped about him ; but the 
place at his right hand, the place Au- 
rora was meant to fill, was vacant. Cap- 
tain Bulstrode turned away from that 
gaily-lighted scene and ran up the stair- 
case to his room, where he found hia 
servant waiting with his master’s clothes 
laid out, wondering why he had not 
come to dress. 

The man fell back at the sight of Tal- 
bot’s face, ghastly in the light of the 
wax-candles on the dressing-table. 

“ I am going away, Philmau,” said 
the captain, speaking very fast, and in 
a thick indistinct voice. “ I am going 
down to Cornwall by the express to- 
night, if I can get to town in time to 
catch the train. Pack ray clothes and 
come after me. You can join me at the 
Paddington Station. I shall walk up 
to Beckenham, and take the first train 
for town. Here, give this to the servants 
for me, will you ?” 

He took a confused heap of gold and 
silver from his pocket, and dropped it 
into the man’s hand. 

“ Nothing wrong at Buistrode, I hope, 
sir ?” said the servant. “Is Sir John 
ill ?” 

“No, no ; I’ve had a letter from ray 
mother — I — you’ll find me at the Great 
Western.” 

He snatched up his hat, and was hur- 
rying from the room ; but the man fol- 
lowed him with his greatcoat. 

“ You’ll catch your death, sir, on such 
a night as this,” the servant said, in a 
tone of respectful remonstrance. 

The banker was standing at the door 
of the dining-room when Talbot crossed 
the hall. He was telling a servant to 
look for his daughter. 

“We are all waiting for Miss Floyd,” 
the old man said ; “ we cannot begin 
dinner without Miss Floyd.” 

Unobserved in the confusion, Talbot 
opened the great door softly, and let 
himself out into the cold winter’s night. 
The long terrace was all ablaze with the 
lights in the high narrow windows, as 
upon the night when he had first come 
to Felden ; and before him lay the park, 
the trees bare and leafless, the ground 
white with a thin coating of snow, the 


AURORA FLOYD. 


78 

sky above gray and starless — a cold and 
desolate expanse, i»* dreary contrast 
with the warmth and brightness behind. 
All this was typical of the crisis of his 
life. He was leaving warm love and 
hope, for cold resignation or icy despair. 
He went down the terrace-steps, across 
the trim garden-walks, and out into that 
wide, mysterious park. The long avenue 
was ghostly in the gray light, the tracery 
of the interlacing branches above his 
head making black shadows, that flick- 
ered to and fro upon the whitened ground 
beneath his feet. He walked for a quar- 
ter of a mile before he looked back at 
the lighted windows behind him. He 
did not turn, until a wind in the avenue 
had brought him to a spot from which 
he could see the dimly-lighted bay win- 
dow of the room in which he had left 
Aurora. He stood for some time look- 
ing at this feeble glimmer, and thinking 
— thinking of all he had lost, or all he 
had perhaps escaped — thinking of what 
his life was to be henceforth without that 
woman — thinking that he would rather 
have been the poorest ploughboy in 
Beckenham parish than the heir of Bul- 
strode, if he could have taken the girl 
he loved to his heart, and believed in her 
truth. 

— 4 

CHAPTER X. 

FIGHTING THE BATTLE. 

The new year began in sadness at 
Felden Woods, for it found Archibald 
Floyd watching in the sick-room of his 
only daughter. 

Aurora had taken h‘er place at the 
long dinner-table upon the night of Tal- 
bot’s departure; and, except for being 
perhaps a little more vivacious and bril- 
liant than usual, her manner had in no 
way changed after that terrible interview 
in the bay-windowed room. She had 
talked to John Mellish, and had played 
and sung to her younger cousins ; she 
had stood behind her father, looking 
over his cards through all the fluctuating 
fortunes of a rubber of long whist ; and 
the next morning her maid had found 
her in a raging fever, with burning 
cheeks and blood-shot eyes, her long 
purple-black hair all tumbled and tossed 


about the pillows, and her dry hands 
scorching to the touch. The telegraph 
brought two grave London physicians 
to Felden before noon ; and the house 
was clear of visitors by nightfall, only 
Mrs. Alexander and Lucy remaining to 
assist in nursing the invalid. Tlie West- 
End doctors said very little. This fever 
was as other fevers to them. The young 
lady had caught a cold perhaps ; she 
had been imprudent, as these young 
people will be, and had received some 
sudden chill. She had very likely over- 
heated herself with dancing, or had sat 
in a draught, or eaten an ice. There 
was no immediate danger to be appre- 
hended. The patient had a superb con* 
stitution ; there was wonderful vitality 
in the system ; and, with careful treat- 
ment, she would soon come round. 
Careful treatment meant a two-guinea 
visit every day from each of these learned 
gentlemen, though, perhaps, had they 
given utterance to their inmost thoughts, 
they would have owned that, for all they 
could tell to the contrary, Aurora Floyd 
wanted nothing but to be let alone, and 
left in a darkened chamber to fight out 
the battle by herself. But the banker 
would have had all Saville Row sum- 
moned to the sick-lied of his child, if he 
could by such a measure have saved her 
a moment’s pain ; and he implored the 
two physicians to come to Felden twice 
a day if necessary, and to call in other 
physicians if they had the least fear for 
their patient. Aurora was delirious ; 
but she revealed very little in that deli- 
rium. I do not quite believe that peo- 
ple often make the pretty, sentimental, 
consecutive confessions under the influ- 
ence of fever which are so freely attribu- 
ted to them by the writers of romances. 
We rave about foolish things in those 
cruel moments of feverish madness. We 
are wretched because there is a man with 
a white hat on in the room, or a black 
cat upon the counterpane, or spiders 
crawling about the bed-curtains, or a 
coal-heaver who will put a sack of coals 
on 6ur chest. Our delirious fancies are 
like our dreams, and have very little 
connection with the sorrows or joys which 
make up the sum of our lives. 

So Aurora Floyd talked of horses and 
dogs, and masters and governesses ; of 
childish troubles that had afflicted her 
years before, and of girlish pleasures, 


AURORA FLOYD. 


79 


which, in her normal state of mind, had 
been utterly forgotten. She seldom re- 
cognized Lucy or Mrs. Alexander, mis- 
taking them for all kinds of unlikely 
people ; but she never entirely forgot her 
father, and, indeed, always seemed to be 
conscious of his presence, and was per- 
petually appealing to him, imploring 
him to forgive her for some act of child- 
ish disobedience committed in those de- 
parted years of which she talked so 
much. 

John Hellish had taken up his abode 
at the Grayhound Inn, in Croydon High 
Street, and drove every day to Felden 
Woods, leaving his phaeton at the park- 
gates, and walking up to the house to 
make his inquiries. The servants took 
notice of the big Yorkshireman’s pale 
face, and set him down at once as 
” sweet” upon their young lady. They 
liked him a great deal better than Cap- 
tain Bulstrode, who had been too “ igh” 
and “aughty” for them. John flung his 
half-sovereigns right and left when he 
came to the hushed mansion in which 
Aurora lay, with loving friends about 
her. He held the footman who answered 
the door by the button-hole, and would 
have gladly paid the man half-a-crown 
a minute for his time while he asked 
anxious questions about Miss Floyd’s 
health, Mr. Hellish was warmly s^- 
pathised with, therefore, in the servaWs’ 
hall at Felden. His man had informed 
the banker’s household how he was the 
best master in England, and how Hel- 
lish Park was a species of terrestrial 
Paradise, maintained for the beneflt of 
trustworthy retainers ; and Mr. Floyd’s 
servants expressed a wish that their 
young lady might get well, and marry 
the “fair one,” as they called John. 
They came to the conclusion that there 
had been what they called “a split” be- 
tween Miss Floyd and the captain, and 
that he had gone off in a huff, which 
was like his impudence, seeing that their 
young lady would have hundreds of 
thousands of pounds by and by, and was 
good enough for a duke instead of a 
beggarly officer. 

Talbot’s letter to Mr. Floyd reached 
Felden Woods on the 2Hh of Decem- 
ber ; but it lay for some time unopened 
upon the library table. Archibald had 
scarcely heeded his intended son-in-law’s 
disappearance in his anxiety about Au- 


rora. When he did open the letter, 
Captain Bulstrode’s words were almost 
meaningless to him, though he was just 
able to gather that the engagement had 
been broken ; by his daughter’s wish, as 
Talbot seemed to infer. 

The banker’s reply to this communi- 
cation was very brief ; he wrote : 

“My dear Sir, — Your letter arrived 
here some days since, but has -only been 
opened by me this morning. I have laid 
it aside, to be replied to, d. v., at a fu- 
ture time. At present I am unable to 
attend to any thing. My daughter is 
seriously ill. 

“ Yours obediently, 

“Archibald Floyd.” 

“ Seriously ill I” Talbot Bulstrode 
sat for nearly an hour with the banker’s 
letter in his hand, looking at those two 
words. How much or how little might 
the sentence mean ? At one moment, 
remembering Archibald Floyd’s devo- 
tion to hie daughter, he thought that 
this serious illness was doubtless some 
very trifling business — some feminine 
nervous attack, common to young ladies 
upon any hitch in their love affairs; 
but five minutes afterwards he fancied 
that those words had an awful meaning 
— that Aurora wms dying, dying of the 
shame and anguish of that interview in 
the little chamber at Felden. 

Heaven above I what had he done ? 
Had he murdered this beautiful crea- 
ture, whom he loved a million times 
better than himself? Had he killed her 
with those impalpable weapons, those 
sharp and cruel words which he had 
spoken on the 25th of December ? He 
acted the scene over again and again, 
until the sense of outraged honor, then 
so strong upon him, seemed to grow 
dim and confused ; and he began almost 
to wonder why he had quarrelled with 
Aurora. What if, after all, this secret 
involved only some school-girl’s folly ? 
No; the crouching figure and ghastly 
face gave the lie to that hope. The 
secret, whatever it might be, was a 
matter of life and death to Aurora 
Floyd. He dared not try to guess what 
it was. He tried to close his mind 
against the surmises that would arise to 
him. In the first days that succeeded 
that terrible Christmas he determine^! 


80 


AURORA FLOYD. 


to leave England. He would try to 
get some Government appointment that 
would take him away to the other end 
of the world, where he could never hear 
Aurora’s name — never be enlightened 
as to the mystery that had separated 
them. But now, now that she was ill — 
in danger, perhaps — how could he leave 
the country ? How could he go away 
to some place where he might one day 
open the- English newspapers and see 
her name among the list of deaths ? 

Talbot was a dreary guest at Bul- 
strode Castle. His mother and his 
cousin Constance respected his pale 
face, and held themselves aloof from 
him in fear and trembling; but his 
father asked what the deuce was the 
matter with the boy, that he looked so 
chapfallen, and why he didn’t take his 
gun and go out on the moors, and get 
an appetite for his dinner, like a Chris- 
tian, instead of moping in his own 
rooms all day long biting his fingers’ 
ends. 

Once, and once only, did Lady Bul- 
strode allude to Aurora Floyd. 

“ You asked Miss Floyd for an ex- 
planation, I suppose, Talbot ?” she said. 

“Yes, mother.” 

“ And the result? — ” 

“Was the termination of our engage- 
ment. I had rather you would not 
speak to me of this subject again, if you 
please, mother.” 

Talbot took his gun, and went out 
upon the moors, as his father advised ; 
but it was not to slaughter the last of 
the pheasants, but to think in peace of 
Aurora Floyd, that the young man went 
out. The low-lying clouds upon the 
moorlands seemed to shut him in like 
prison-walls. How many miles of deso- 
late country lay between the dark ex- 
panse on which he stood and the red- 
brick mansion at Felden I — how many 
leafless hedgerows I — how many frozen 
streams! It was only a day’s journey, 
certainly, by the Great Western; but 
there was something cruel in the know- 
ledge that half the length of England 
lay between the Kentish woods and that 
far angle of the British Isles upon which 
Castle Bulstrode reared its weather- 
beaten walls. The w^ail of mourning 
voices might be loud in Kent, and not a 
whisper of death reach the listening 
ears in Cornwall. How he envied the 


lowest servant at Felden, who knew day 
by day and hour by hour of the progress 
of the battle between Death and Aurora 
Floyd! And yet, after all, what was 
she to him ? What did it matter to 
him if she were well or ill ? The grave 
could never separate them more utterly 
than they had been separated from the 
very moment in which he discovered 
that she was not worthy to be his wife. 
He had done her no wrong ; he had 
given her a full and fair opportunity of 
clearing herself from the doubtful sha- 
dow on her name ; and she had been 
unable to do so. Nay, more, she bad 
given him every reason to suppose, by 
her manner, that the shadow was even a 
darker one than he had feared. Was 
he to blame, then? Was it his fault if 
she were ill ? Were his days to be 
misery, and his nights a burden, because 
of her ? He struck the stock of his 
gun violently upon the ground at the 
thought, and thrust the ramrod down 
the barrel, and loaded his fowling-piece 
furiously with nothing ; and then, cast- 
ing himself at full length upon the 
stunted turf, lay there till the early dusk 
closed in about him, and the soft even- 
ing dew saturated bis shooting coat, and 
he was in a fair way to be stricken with 
rheumatic fever. 

J might fill chapters with the foolish 
sunerings of this young man ; but I 
fear he must have become very weari- 
some to my afflicted readers ; to those, 
at least, who have never suffered from 
this fever. The sharper the disease, 
the shorter its continuance ; so Talbot 
will be better by and by, and will look 
back at his old self, and laugh at his 
old agonies. Surely this inconstancy 
of ours is the worst of all — this fickle- 
ness, by reason of which we cast off our 
former selves with no more compunction 
than we feel in flinging off a worn-out 
garment. Our poor threadbare selves, 
the shadows of what we were ! With 
what sublime, patronizing pity, with 
what scornful compassion, we look back 
upon the helpless dead and gone crea- 
tures, and wonder that any thing so 
foolish could have been allowed to cum- 
ber the earth ! Shall I feel the same 
contempt ten years hence for myself as 
I am to-day, as I feel to-day for myself 
as I was ten years ago ? Will the loves 
and aspirations, the .beliefs and desires 


AURORA FLOYD. 


• 81 


of to-day, appear as pitiful then as the 
dead loves and dreams of the bygone 
decade ? Shall I look back in ])itying 
wonder, and think what a fool tliat 
young man was; although there was 
something candid and innocent in his 
very stupidity, after all ? Who can 
wonder that the last visit to Paris killed 
Voltaire ? Fancy the octogenarian 
looking round the national theatre, and 
seeing himself, through an endless vista 
of dim years, a young man again, pay- 
ing his court to a “goat-faced cardinal,” 
and being beaten by De Rohan’s lackeys 
in bright daylight. 

Have you ever visited some country 
town after a lapse of years, and won- 
dered, O fast-living reader, to find the 
people you knew in your last visit still 
alive and thriving, with hair unbleached 
as yet, although you have lived and 
suflered whole centuries since then ? 
Surely Providence gives us this sublimely 
egotistical sense of Time as a set-off 
against the brevity of our lives I I might ! 
make this book a companion in bulk to 
the Catalogue of the British Museum, if 
I were to tell all that Talbot Bulstrode 
felt and suffered in the month of January, 

1 858, — if I were to anatomise the doubts 
and confusions and self-contradictions, 
the mental resolutions made one mo- 
ment to be broken the next. I refrain, 
therefore, and will set down nothing but 
the fact, tliat on a certain Sunday, raid- 
way in the month, the captain, sitting 
in the family pew at Bulstrode church 
directly facing the monument of Admiral 
Hartley Bulstrode, who fought and died 
in the days of Queen Elizabeth, regis- 
tered a silent oath that as he was a 
gentleman and a Christian he would 
henceforth abstain from holding any 
voluntary communication with Aurora 
F'loyd. But for this vow he must have 
broken down, and yielded to his yearning 
fear and love, and gone to Felden Woods 
to throw himself, blind and unquestion- 
ing, at the feet of the sick woman. 

The tender green of the earliest leaf- 
lets was breaking out in bright patches 
upon the hedgerows round Felden 
Woods; the ash-buds were no longer 
black upon the front of March, and pale 
violets and primroses made exquisite 
tracery in the shady nooks beneath the 
oaks and beeches.. All nature was re- 
5 


joicing in the mild April weather, when 
Aurora Floyd lifted her dark eyes to her 
father’s face with something of their old 
look and familiar light. The battle had 
been a long and severe one ; but it was 
well-nigh over now, the physicians said; 
defeated Death drew back for a while, 
to wait a better opportunity for making 
his fatal spring; and the feeble victor 
was to be carried down-stairs to sit in 
the drawing-room for the first time since 
the night of December the 25th. 

John Mellish, happening to be at 
Felden that day, was allowed the su- 
preme privilege of carrying the fragile 
burden in his strong aians from the door 
of the sick-chamber to the great sofa by 
the fire in the drawing-room, attended 
by a procession of happy people bearing 
shawls and pillows, vinaigrettes and 
scent-bottles, and other invalid para- 
phernalia. Every creature at Felden 
was devoted to this adored convalescent. 
Archibald Flpyd lived only to minister 
to her; gentle Lucy waited on her night 
and day, fearful to trust the service to 
menial hands ; Mrs. Powell, like some 
pale and quiet shadow, lurked amidst the 
bed-curtaius, soft of foot and watchful 
of eye, invaluable in the sick-chamber, 
as the doctors said. Throughout her 
illness, Aurora had never mentioned the 
name of Talbot Bulstrode. Not even 
when the fever was at its worst, and the 
brain most distraught, had that familiar 
name escaped her lips. Other names, 
strange to Lucy, had been repeated by 
her again and again : the names of places 
and horses, and slangy technicalities of 
the turf, had interlarded the poor girl’s 
brain-sick .babble ; but whatever were 
her feelings with regard to Talbot, no 
word had revealed their depth or sad- 
ness. Yet I do not think that my poor 
dark-eyed heroine was utterly feelinglcss 
upon this point. When they first spoke 
of carrying her down-stairs, Mrs. Powell 
and Lucy proposed the little bay- win- 
dowed chamber, which was small and 
snug, and had a southern aspect, as the 
fittest place for the invalid ; but Aurora 
cried out, shuddering, that she would 
never enter that hateful chamber again. 

As soon as ever she was strong enough 
to bear the fatigue of the journey, it was 
considered advisable to remove her from 
Felden ; and Leamington was suggested 
by the doctors as the best place for the 


82 


AURORA FLOYD. 


change. A mild climate and a pretty 
inland retreat, a hushed and quiet town, 
peculiarly adapted to invalids, being al- 
most deserted by other visitors after the 
hunting season. 

Shakespeare’s birthday had come and 
gone, and the high festivals at Stratford 
were over, when Archibald Floyd took 
his pale daughter to Leamington. A 
furnished cottage had been engaged for 
them a mile and a half out of the town ; 
a pretty place, half-villa, half-farmhouse, 
with walls of white plaster chequered 
with beams of black wood, and well-nigh 
buried in a luxuriant and trimly-kept 
flower-garden ; a pleasant place, forming 
one of a little cluster of rustic buildings 
crowded about a gray old church in a 
nook of the roadway, where two or three 
green lanes met, and went branching otf 
between overhanging hedges ; a most 
retired spot, yet clamorous with that 
noise which is of all others cheerful and 
joyous, — the hubbub of farmyards, the 
cackle of poultry, the cooing of pigeons, 
the monotonous lowing of lazy cattle, 
and the squabbling grunt of quarrelsome 
pigs. Archibald could not have brought 
his daughter to a better place. The 
chequered farmhouse seemed a haven of 
rest to this poor weary girl of nineteen. 
It was so pleasant to lie wrapped in 
shawls, on a chintz-covered sofa, in the 
open window, listening to the. rustic 
noises in the straw-littered yard upon the 
other side of the hedge, with her faith- 
ful Bow-wow’s big forepaws resting on 
the cushions at her feet. The sounds in 
the farmyard were pleasanter to Aurora 
than the monotonous inflections of Mrs. 
Powell’s voice; but as that lady con- 
sidered it a part of he^r duty to read 
aloud for the invalid’s delectation. Miss 
Floyd was too good-natured to own how 
tired she was of Marmion and Ghilde 
Harold^ Evangeline and The Queen of 
the May, and how she would have pre- 
ferred in her present state of mind to 
listen to a lively dispute between a brood 
of ducks round the pond in the farmyard, 
or a trifling discussion in the pigsty, to 
tlie sublimest lines ever penned by poet, 
living or dead. The poor girl had suf- 
fered very much, and there was a certain 
sensuous, lazy pleasure in this slow re- 
covery, this gradual return to strength. 
Her own nature revived in unison with 
the bright revival of the genial summer 


weather. As the trees in the garden 
put forth new strength and beauty, so 
the glorious vitality of her constitution 
returned with much of its wonted power. 
The bitter blows had left their scars be- 
hind them, but they not killed her, after 
all. They had not utterly changed her 
even, for glimpses of the old Aurora 
appeared day by day in the pale conva- 
lescent; and Archibald Floyd, whose life 
was at best but a reflected existence, felt 
his hopes revive as he looked at his 
daughter. Lucy and her mother had 
gone back to the villa at Fulham, and 
to their own family duties ; so the Leam- 
ington party consisted only of Aurora 
and her father, and that pale shadow 
of propriety, the ensign’s light-haired 
widow. But they were not long without 
a visitor. John Mellish, artfully taking 
the banker at a disadvantage in some 
moment of flurry and confusion at Felden 
Woods, had extorted from him an invi- 
tation to Leamington ; and a fortnight 
after their arrival he presented his stal- 
wart form and fair face at the low 
wooden gates of the chequered cottage. 
Aurora laughed (for the flrst time since 
her illness) as she saw that faithful adorer 
come, carpet-bag in hand, through the 
labyrinth of grass and flower-beds to- 
wards the open window at which she and 
her father sat ; and Archibald, seeing 
that first gleam of gaiety in the beloved 
face, could have hugged John Mellish 
for being the cause of it. He would 
have embraced a street-tumbler, or the 
low comedian of a booth at a fair, or a 
troop of performing dogs and monkeys, 
or any thing upon earth that could win 
a smile from his sick child. Like the 
Eastern potentate in the fairy tale, who 
always offers half his kingdom and his 
daughter’s hand to any one who can cure 
the princess of her bilious headache, 
or extract her carious tooth, Archibald 
would have opened a banking-account 
in Lombard Street, with a fabulous sum 
to start with, for any one Who could give 
pleasure to this black-eyed girl, now 
smiling, for the first time in that year, at 
sight of the big fair-faced Yorkshireman 
coming to pay his foolish worship at her 
shrine. 

It was not to be supposed that Mr. 
Floyd had felt no wonder as to the cause 
of the rupture of his daughter’s engage- 
ment to Talbot Bulstrpde. The anguish 


AURORA FLOYD. 


and terror endured by him during her 
long illness had left no room for any 
other thought; but since the passing 
away of the danger, he had pondered 
not a little upon the abrupt rupture be- 
tween the lovers. lie ventured once, in 
the first week of their stay at Leaming- 
ton, to speak to her upon the subject, 
asking why it was she had dismissed the 
captain. Now if there was one thing 
more hateful than another to Aurora 
Floyd, it was a lie. I do not say that 
she had never told one in the course of 
her life. There are some acts of folly 
which carry falsehood and dissimulation 
at their heels as certainly as the shadows 
which follow us when we walk towards 
the evening sun ; and we very rarely 
swerve from the severe boundary-line of 
right without being dragged ever so 
much farther than we calculated upon 
crossing the border. Alas, ray heroine 
is not faultless. She would take her 
shoes off to give them to the barefooted 
poor ; she would take the heart from her 
breast, if she could by so doing heal the 
wounds she had inflicted upon the loving 
heart of her father. But a shadow of 
mad folly has blotted her motherless 
youth, and she has a terrible harvest to 
reap from that lightly-sown seed, and a 
cruel expiation to make for that unfor- 
gotten wrong. Yet her natural dispo- 
sition is all truth and candor ; and there 
are many young ladies, whose lives have 
been as primly ruled and ordered as the 
fair pleasure-gardens of a Tyburnian 
Square, who could tell a falsehood with 
a great deal better grace than Aurora 
Floyd. So when her father asked her 
why she had dismissed Talbot Bulstrode, 
^he made no answer to that question ; 
out simply told him that the quarrel had 
been a very painful one, and that she 
hoped never to hear the captain’s name 
again; although at the same. time she 
assured Mr. Floyd that her lover’s con- 
duct had been in nowise unbecoming a 
gentleman and a man of honor. Arch- 
ibald implicitly obeyed his daughter in 
this matter, and the name of Talbot 
Bulstrode never being spoken, it seemed 
as if the young man had dropped out of 
their lives, or as if he had never had any 
part in the destiny of Aurora Floyd. 
Heaven knows what Aurora herself felt 
and suffered in the quiet of her low- 
roofed, white-curtained little chamber, 


83 

with the soft May moonlight stealing in 
at the casement-windows, and creeping 
in wan radiance about the walls. Heaven 
only knows the bitterness of the silent 
battle. Her vitality made her strong to 
suffer; her vivid imagination intensified 
every throb of pain. In a dull and tor- 
pid soul grief is a slow anguish ; but 
with her it was a fierce and tempestuous 
emotion, in which past and future seemed 
rolled together with the present to make 
a concentrated agony. But by an All- 
wise dispensation, the stormy sorrow 
wears itself out by reason of its very 
violence, while the dull woe drags its 
slow length sometimes through weary 
years, becoming at last engrafted in the 
very nature of the patient sufferer, as 
some diseases become part of our con- 
stitutions. Aurora was fortunate in be- 
ing permitted to fight her battle in 
silence, aild to suffer unquestioned. If 
the dark hollow rings about her eyes told 
of sleepless nights, Archibald Floyd 
forbore to torment her with anxious 
speeches and trite consolations. The 
clairvoyance of love told him that it was 
better to let her alone. So the trou- 
ble hanging over the little circle was 
neither seen nor spoken of. Aurora 
kept her skeleton in some quiet corner, 
and no one saw the grim skull, or heard 
the rattle of the dry bones. Archibald 
Floyd read his newspapers, and wrote 
his letters ; Mrs. Walter Powell tended 
the convalescent, who reclined during 
the best part of the day on the sofa in 
the open window ; and John Mellish 
loitered about the garden and the farm- 
yard, leaned on the low white gate, 
smoking his cigar, and talking to the 
men about the place, and was in and 
out of the house twenty times in an hour. 
The banker pondered sometimes in serio- 
comic perplexity as to what was to be 
done with this big Yorkshireman, who 
hung upon him like a good-natured 
monster of six feet two, conjured into 
existence by the hospitality of a modern 
Frankenstein. He had invited him to 
dinner, and, lo, he appeared to be sad- 
dled with him for life. He could not 
tell the friendly, generous, loud-spoken 
creature to go away. Besides, Mr. 
Mellish was on the whole very useful, 
and he did much towards keeping Au- 
rora in apparently good spirits. Yet, 
on the other hand, was it right to tam- 


AURORA FLOYD. 


84 

per with this great loving heart ? Was 
it just to let the young man linger in the 
light of those black eyes, and then send 
him away when the invalid was equal to 
the efifcrt of giving him his conge f 
Archibald Floyd did not know that John 
had been rejected by his daughter on a 
certain autumn morning at Brighton. So 
he made up his mind to speak frankly, and 
sound the depths of his visitor’s feelings. 

Mrs. Powell was making tea at a lit- 
tle table near one of the windows ; Au- 
rora had fallen asleep with an open book 
in her hand ; and the banker walked with 
John Mellish up and down an espalier- 
ed alley in the golden sunset. 

Archibald freely communicated his 
perplexities to the Yorkshireman. “ I 
need not tell you, my dear Mellish,” he 
said, “how pleasant.it is to me to have 
you here. I never had a son ; but if it 
had pleased God to give me one, I could 
have wished him to be just such a frank, 
noble-hearted fellow as yourself. I’m 
an old man, and have seen a great deal 
of trouble — the sort of trouble which 
strikes deeper home to the heart than 
any sorrow^ that begin in Lombard 
street or on ’Change ; but I feel younger 
in your society, and I find myself cling- 
ing to you and leaning on you as a fa- 
ther might upon his son. You may be- 
lieve, then, that I don’t wish to get rid 
of you.” 

“ I do, Mr. Floyd ; but do you think 
that any one else wishes to get rid of 
me ? Do you think I’m a nuisance to 
Miss Floyd ?” 

“ No, Mellish,” answered the banker 
energetically. “ I am sure that Aurora 
takes pleasure in your society, and seems 
to treat you almost as if you were her 
brother ; but — but — I know your feel- 
ings, my dear boy, and what I fear is, 
that you may perhaps never inspire a 
w'arnier feeling in her heart.” 

“ Let me stay and take my chance, 
Mr. Floyd,” cried John, throwing his 
cigar across the espaliers, and coming to 
a dead stop upon the gravel-walk in the 
warmth of his enthusiasm. “ Let me 
stay and take my chance. If there’s any 
disappointment to be borne. I’ll bear it 
like a man ; I’ll go back to the Park, 
and you shall never be bothered with 
me again. Miss Floyd has rejected me 
once already ; but perhaps I was in 
too great a hurry. I’ve grown wiser 


since then, and I have learnt to bide 
my time. I’ve one of the finest estates 
in Yorkshire; I’m not worse looking 
than the generality of fellows or worse 
educated than the generality of fellows. I 
may’nt have straight hair, and a paleface, 
and look as if I’d walked out of a three 
volume novel, like Talbot Bulstrode. I 
may be a stone or two over the correct 
weight for winning a young lady’s heart ; 
but I’m sound in wind and limb. I never 
told a lie, or committed a mean action ; 
and I love your daughter with as true 
and pure a love as ever man felt for 
woman. May I try my luck once more ?” 

“You may, John.” 

“ And have I, — thank you, sir, for 
calling me John, — have I your good 
wishes for my success ?” 

The banker shook Mr. Mellish by the 
hand as he answered this question. 

“You have, my dear John, my best 
and heartiest wishes.” 

So there were three battles of the 
heart being fought in that spring-tide of 
fifty-eight. Aurora and Talbot, sepa- 
rated from each other by the length and 
breadth of half England, yet united by 
an impalpable chain, were struggling 
day by day to break its links ; while 
poor John Mellish quietly waited in the 
background, fighting the sturdy fight of 
the strong heart, which very rarely' fails 
to win the prize it is set upon, however 
high or far away that prize may seem 
to be. 


CHAPTER XI. 

AT THE CHATEAU D’ARQUES. 

John Mellish made himself entirely 
at home in the little Leamington circle 
after this interview with Mr. Floyd. 
No one could have been more tender in 
his manner, more respectful, untiring, 
and devoted, than was this rough York- 
shireman to the broken old man. Arch- 
ibald must have been less than human 
had he not in somewise returned this 
devotion, and it is therefore scarcely to 
be wondered that he became very warmly 
attached to his daughter’s adorer. Had 
John Mellish been the most designing 
disciple of Machiavelli, instead of the 
most transparent and candid of living 


AURORA FLOYD. 


creatures, I scarcely think he could have 
adopted a truer means of making for 
himself a claim upon the gratitude of 
Aurora Floyd than by the affection he 
evinced for her father. And this affec- 
tion was as genuine as all else in that 
simple nature. How could he do other- 
wise than love Aurora’s father ? He was 
her father. He had a sublime claim 
upon the devotion of the man who loved 
her ; who loved her as John loved, 
unreservedly, undoubtingly, childishly ; 
with such blind, unquestioning love as 
an infant feels for its mother. There 
may be better women than that mother, 
perhaps ; but who shall make the child 
believe so ? 

John Mellish could not argue with 
himself upon his passion, as Talbot Bul- 
strode had done. He could not sepa- 
rate himself from his love, and reason 
with the wild madness. How could he 
divide himself from that which was him- 
self ; more than himself ; a diviner self? 
He asked no questions about the past 
life of the woman he loved. He never 
sought to know the secret of Talbot’s 
• departure from Felden. He saw her, 
beautiful, fascinating, perfect, and he ac- 
cepted her as a great and wonderful 
fact, like the moon and the stars shining 
down on the rustic flower-beds and es- 
paliered garden- walks in the balmy June 
nights. 

So the tranquil days glided slowly 
and monotonously past that quiet circle. 
Aurora bore her silent burden ; bore 
her trouble with a grand courage, pecu- 
liar to such rich organisations as her 
own, and none knew whether the ser- 
pent had been rooted from her breast, 
or had made for himself a permanent 
home in her heart. The banker’s most 
watchful care could not fathom the 
womanly mystery ; but there were times 
when Archibald Floyd ventured to hope 
that his daughter was at peace, and 
Talbot Bulstrode well-nigh forgotten. 
In^ any case, it was wise to keep her 
away from Felden Woods ; so Mr. 
Floyd proposed a tour through Nor- 
mandy to his daughter and Mrs. Powell. 
Aurora consented, with a tender smile 
and gentle pressure of her father’s hand. 
She divined the old man’s motive, and 
recognized the all-watchful love which 
sought to carry her from the scene of 
her trouble. John Mellish, who was 


85 

not invited to join the party, burst forth 
into such raptures at the proposal, that 
it would have required considerable 
hardness of heart to have refused his 
escort. He knew every inch of Nor- 
mandy, he said, and promised to be of 
infinite use to Mr. Floyd and his daugh- 
ter ; which, seeing that his knowledge 
of Normandy had been acquired in his 
attendance at the Dieppe steeple-chases, 
and that his acquaintance with the 
French language was very limited, seem- 
ed rather doubtful. But for all this he 
contrived to keep his word. He went 
up to town and hired an all-accom- 
plished courier, who conducted the lit- 
tle party from town to village, from 
church to ruin, and who could always 
find relays of Normandy horses for the 
banker’s roomy travelling carriage. The 
little party travelled from place to place 
until pale gleams of color returned in 
transient flushes to Aurora’s cheeks. 
Grief is terribly selfish. 1 fear that 
Miss Floyd never took into considera- 
tion the havoc that might be going on 
in the great honest heart of John Mel- 
lish. I dare say that if she had ever 
considered the matter, she would have 
■thought that a broad-shouldered York- 
shireman of six feet two could never 
suffer seriously from such a passion as 
love. She grew accustomed to his so- 
ciety ; accustomed to have his strong 
arm handy for her to lean upon when 
she grew tired ; accustomed to his car- 
rying her sketch-book and shawls and 
camp-stools ; accustomed to be waited 
upon by him all day, and served faith- 
fully by him at every turn ; taking his 
homage as a thing of course, but making 
him superlatively and dangerously hap- 
py by her tacit acceptance of it. 

September was half gone when they 
bent their way homeward, lingering for 
a few days at Dieppe, where the bathers 
were splashing about in semi-theatrical 
costume, and the Etablissement des 
Bains was all aflame with colored lan- 
terns and noisy with nightly concerts. 

The early autumnal days were glorious 
in their balmy beauty. The best part 
of a year had gone by since Talbot Bul- 
strode had bade Aurora that adieu which, 
in one sense at least, was to be eternal. 
They two, Aurora and Talbot, might 
meet again, it is true. They might meet, 
ay, and even be cordial and friendly to- 


86 


AURORA FLOYD. 


p^ether, ana ao each other good service 
in some'dim time to come ; but the two 
lovers who had parted in the little bay- 
windowed room at Felden Woods could 
ne\:er meet again. Between ^/lem there 
was death and the grave. 

Perhaps some such thoughts as these 
had their place in the breast of Aurora 
Floyd as she sat with John Mellish at 
her side, looking down upon the varied 
landscape from the height upon which 
the ruined walls of the Chateau d’Arques 
still rear the proud memorials of a day 
that is dead. I don’t suppose that the 
banker’s daughter troubled herself much 
about Henry the Fourth, or any other 
dead-and-gone-celebrity who may have 
left the impress of his name upon that 
spot. She felt a tranquil sense of the 
exquisite purity and softness of the air, 
the deep blue of the cloudless sky, the 
spreading woods and grassy plains, the 
orchards, where the trees were rosy with 
their plenteous burden, the tiny stream- 
lets, the white villa-like cottages and 
straggliiig gardens, outspread in affair 
])anorama beneath her. Carried out of 
her sorrow by the sensuous rapture we 
derive from nature, and for the first time 
discovering in herself a vague sense of 
happiness, she began to wonder how it 
was she had outlived her grief by so 
many months. 

She had never during those weary 
months heard of Talbot Bulstrode. Any 
change might have come to him without 
her knowledge. He might have mar- 
ried ; might have chosen a prouder and 
worthier bride to share his lofty name. 
She might meet him on her return to 
England with that happier woman lean- 
ing upon his arm. Would some good- 
natured friend tell the bride how Talbot 
had loved and wooed the banker’s daugh- 
ter ? Aurora found herself pitying this 
happier woman, who would, after all, 
win but the second love of that proud 
heart ; the pale reflection of a sun that 
has set; the feeble glow of expiring em- 
bers when the great blaze has died out. 
They had made her a couch with shawls 
and carriage-rugs, outspread upon a 
rustic seat, for she was still far from 
strong; and she lay in the bright Sep- 
tember sunshine, looking down at the 
fair landscape, and listening to the hum 
of beetles and the chirp of grasshoppers 
upon the smooth turf. 


Her father had walked to some dis- 
tance with Mrs. Powell, who explored 
every crevice and cranny of the ruins 
with the dutiful perseverance peculiar to 
commonplace people ; but faithful John 
Mellish never stirred from her side. He 
was watching her musing face, trying to 
read its meaning — trying to gather a 
gleam of hope from some chance ex- 
pression floating across it. Neither he 
nor she knew how long he had watched 
her thus, when, turning to speak to him 
about the landscape at her feet, she found 
him on his knees imploring her to have 
pity upon him, and to love, him, or to let 
him love her, which was much the same. 

“ I don’t expect you to love me, Au- 
rora,” he said passionately ; “ liow should 
you ? What is there in a big clumsy 
fellow like me to win your love ? I don’t 
ask that. I only ask you to let me love 
you, to let me worship you, as the people 
we see kneeling in the churches here 
worship their saints. You won’t drive 
me away from you, will you, Aurora, be- 
cause I presume to forget what you said 
to me that cruel day at Brighton ? You 
would never have suffered me to stay 
with you so long, and to be so happy, 
if you had meant to drive me away at 
the last ! You never could have been so 
cruel I” 

Miss Floyd looked at him with a sud- 
den terror in her face. What was this ? 
What had she done ? More wrong, more 
mischief! Was her life to be one of 
perpetual wrong-doing ? Was she to be 
forever bringing sorrow upon good peo- 
ple ? Was this John Mellish to be ano- 
ther sufferer by her folly ? 

“ Oh, forgive me !” she cried, “ for- 
give me ! I never thought — ” 

“You never thought that every day 
spent by your side must make the an- 
guish of parting from you more cruelly 
bitter. 0 Aurora, women should think 
of these things! Send me away from 
you, and what shall 1 be for the rest of 
my life — a broken man, fit for nothing 
better than the race-course and the 
betting-rooms ; a reckless man, ready 
to go tO' the bad by any road that can 
take me there; worthless alike to myself 
and to others. You must have seen 
such men, Aurora ; men whose un- 
blemished youth promised an honora- 
ble manhood ; but who break up all of 
a sudden, and go to ruin in a few years 


AURORA FLOYD. 


of mad dissipation. Nine times out of 
ten a woman is the cause of that sudden 
change. I lay ray life at your feet, 
Aurora; I offer you more than my 
heart — I offer you ray destiny. Do 
with it as you will.” 

lie rose in his agitation, and walked 
a few paces away from her. The grass- 
grown battlements sloped away from 
his feet ; outer and inner moat lay be- 
low him, at the bottom of a steep de- 
clivity. What a convenient place for 
suicide, if Aurora should refuse to take 
pity upon him I The reader must allow 
that he had availed himself of consider- 
able artifice in addressing Miss Floyd, 
llis appeal had taken the form of an 
accusation rather than a prayer, and he 
had duly impressed upon this poor girl 
the responsibility she would incur in 
refusing him. And this, 1 take it, is a 
meanness of which men are often guilty 
in their dealings with the weaker sex. 

Miss Floyd looked up at her lover 
with a quiet, half-mournful smile. 

“ Sit down there, Mr. Mellish,” she 
said, pointing to a camp-stool at her 
side. 

John took the indicated seat, very 
much with the air of a prisoner in a 
criminal dock about to answer for his 
life. 

“Shall I tell you a secret?” asked 
Aurora, looking compassionately at his 
pale face. 

“ A secret ?” 

“ Yes ; the secret of my parting with 
Talbot Bulstrode. It was not I who 
dismissed him from Felden ; it was he 
who refused to fulfil his engagement 
with me.” 

She spoke slowly, in a low voice, as 
if it were painful to her to say the 
words which told of so much humilia- 
tion. 

“He did I” cried John Mellish, rising, 
red and furious, from his seat, eager to 
run to look for Talbot Bulstrode then 
und there, in order to inflict chastise- 
ment upon him. 

“He did, John Mellish, and he was- 
justified in doing so,” answered Aurora 
gravely. “You would have done the 
same.” 

“0 Aurora, Auroral” 

“You would. You are as good a 
man as he, and why should your sense 
of honor be less strong than his? A 


87 

barrier arose between Talbot Bulstrode 
and me, and separated us for ever. 
That barrier was a secret.” 

She told him of the missing year in 
her young life; how Talbot had called 
upon her for an explanation, and how 
she had refused to give it. John lis- 
tened to her with a thoughtful face, 
which broke out into sunsliine as she 
turned to him and said, 

“How would you have acted in such 
a case, Mr. Mellish ?” 

“How should I have acted, Aurora? 

I should have trusted you. But I can 
give you a better answer to your ques- 
tion, Aurora. I can answer it by a re- 
newal of the prayer I made you five 
minutes ago. Be my wife.” 

“In spite of this secret ?” 

“In spite of a hundred secrets. I 
could not love you as I do, Aurora, if I 
did not believe you to be all that is best 
and purest in woman. I cannot believe 
this one moment, and doubt you the 
next. I give my life and honor into 
your hands. I would not confide them 
to the woman whom I could insult by a 
doubt.” 

His handsome Saxon face was radiant 
with love and trustfulness as he spoke.’ 
All his patient devotion, so long un- 
heeded or accepted as a thing of course, 
recurred to Aurora’s mind. Did he not 
deserve some reward, some requital, for 
all this? But there was one who was 
nearer and dearer to her, dearer than 
even Talbot Bulstrode had ever been ; 
and that one was the white-haired old 
man pottering about amongst the ruins 
on the other side of the grassy plat- 
form. 

“ Does my father know of this, Mr. ‘ 
Mellish ?” she asked. 

“ He does, Aurora. He has promised 
to accept me as his son ; and Heaven 
knows I will try to deserve that name. 
Do not let me distress- you, Aurora. 
The murder is out now. You know 
that I still love you, still hope. Let 
time do the rest.” 

She held out both her hands to him 
with a tearful smile. He took those 
little hands in his own broad palms, 
and bending down kissed them reve- 
rently. 

“You are right,” she said, “let time 
do the rest. You are worthy of the 
love of a better woman than me, John 


AUBORA FLOYD. 


88 

Mellish; but, with the help of Heaven, 
I will never give you cause to regret 
having trusted me.” 


CHAPTER XII. 

6TEEVE HARGRAVES, THE “SOFTY.” 

Early in October Aurora Floyd re- 
turned to Felden Woods, once more 
“engaged.” The county families open- 
ed their eyes when the report reached 
them that the banker’s daughter was 
going to be married, not to Talbot Bul- 
strode, but to Mr. John Mellish, of Mel- 
lish Park, near Doncaster. The unmar- 
ried ladies — rather hanging on hand 
about Beckenham and West Wickham — 
did not approve of all this chopping 
and changing. They recognized the 
taint of the Prodder blood in this fickle- 
ness. The spangles and the sawdust 
were breaking out, and Aurora was, as 
they had always said, her mother’s own 
daughter. She was a very lucky young 
woman, they remarked, in being able, 
after jilting one rich man, to pick up 
another; but of course a young person, 
whose father could give her fifty thou- 
sand pounds on her wedding day might 
be permitted to play fast and loose with 
the male sex, while worthier Marianas 
moped in their moated granges till gray 
hairs showed themselves in glistening 
bandeaux, and cruel crow’s-feet gathered 
about the corners of bright eyes. It is 
well to be merry and wise, and honest 
and true, and to be off with the old love, 
&c. ; but it is better to be Miss Floyd, 
of the senior branch of Floyd, Floyd, 
and Floyd, for then you need be none 
of these things. At least to such effect 
was the talk about Beckenham when 
Archibald brought his daughter back to 
Felden Woods ; and a crowd of dress- 
makers and milliners set to work at the 
marriage-garments as busily as if Miss 
Floyd had never had any clothes in her 
life before. 

Mrs. Alexander and Lucy came back 
to Felden to assist in the preparations 
for the wedding. Lucy had improved 
very much in aj^pearance since the pre- 
ceding winter ; there was a ha))pier 
light ill her soft blue eyes, and a health- 


ier hue in her cheeks ; but she blushed 
crimson when she first met Aurora, and 
hung back a little from Mi?s Floyd’s 
caresses. 

The wedding was to take place at the 
end of November. The bride and bride- 
groom were to spend the winter in Paris, 
where Archibald Floyd was to join them, 
and return to England “in time for the 
Craven Meeting,” as John Mellish said, 
—for I am sorry to say that, having 
been so happily successful in his love- 
affair, this young man’s thoughts re- 
turned into their accustomed channels; 
and the creature he held dearest on 
earth next to Miss Floyd and those be- 
longing to her, was a bay filly called 
Aurora, and entered for the Oaks and 
Leger of a future year. 

Ought I to apologize for my heroine, 
because she has forgotten Talbot Bul- 
strode, and that she entertains a grateful 
affection for this adoring John Mellish? 
She ought, no doubt, to have died of 
shame and sorrow after Talbot’s cruel 
desertion; and Heaven knows that only 
her youth and vitality carried her through 
a very severe battle with the grim rider 
of the pale horse; but having once 
passed through that dread encounter, 
she was, however feeble, in a fair way to 
recover. These passionate griefs, to 
kill at all, must kill suddenly. The lov* 
ers who die for love in our tragedies die 
in such a vast hurry, that there is gene- 
rally some mistake or misapprehension 
about the business, and the tragedy 
might have been a comedy if the hero or 
heroine had only waited for a quarter 
of an hour. If Othello had but lingered 
a little before smothering his wife. Mis- 
tress Emilia might have come in and 
sworn and protested; and Cassio, with 
the handkerchief about his leg, might 
have been in time to set the mind of the 
valiant Moor at rest and put the Vene- 
tian dog to confusion. How ha})pily 
Mr. and Mrs. Romeo Montague might 
have lived and died, thanks to the dear 
good friar, if the foolish bridegroom had 
not been in such a hurry to swallow the 
vile stuff from the apothecary’s ; and as 
people are, I hope and believe, a little 
wiser in real life than they appear to be 
upon the stage, the worms very rarely 
get an honest meal off men and women 
who have died for love. So Aurora 
walked through the rooms at Felden in 


AURORA FLOYD. 


which Talbot Bulstrode had so often 
walked by her side; and if there was 
any regret at her heart, it was a quiet 
sorrow, such as we feel for the dead, — a 
sorrow not unmingled with pity, for she 
thought that the proud son of Sir John 
Haleigh Bulstrode might have been a 
happier man if he had been as generous 
and trusting as John Mellish. Perhaps 
the healthiest sign of the state of her 
health was, that she could speak of Tal- 
bot freely, cheerfully, and without a 
blush. She asked Lucy if she had met 
Captain Bulstrode that year ; and the 
little hypocrite told her cousin. Yes, that 
he had spoken to them one day in the 
Park, and that she believed he had gone 
into Parliament. She believed! Why, 
she knew his maiden speech by heart, 
though it was on some hopelevSsly unin- 
teresting bill in which the Cornish mines 
were in some vague manner involved 
with the national survey, and she could 
have repeated it as correctly as her 
youngest brother could declaim to his 
“Romans, countrymen, and lovers.” 
Aurora might forget him and basely 
marry a fair-haired Yorkshirernan ; but 
for Lucy Floyd earth only held this dark 
knight, with the severe gray eyes and 
the sti'lf leg. Poor Lucy, therefore, 
loved, and was grateful to her brilliant 
cousin for that fickleness which had 
brought about such a change in the pro- 
gramme of the gay wedding at Felden 
Woods. The fair young confidante and 
bridesmaid could assist in the ceremo- 
nial now with a good grace. She no 
longer walked about like a “corpse 
alive;” but took a hearty womanly in- 
terest in the whole affair, and was very 
much concerned in a discussion as to 
the merits of pink veraus blue for the 
bonnets of the bridesmaids. 

The boisterous happiness of John 
Mellish seemed contagious, and made a 
genial atmosphere about the great man- 
sion at Felden. Stalwart Andrew Floyd 
wms- delighted with his young cousin’s 
choice. No more refusals to join him 
in the hunting-field ; but half the county 
breakfasting at Felden, and the long ter- 
race and garden luminous with “pink.” 

Not a ripple disturbed the smooth 
current of that brief courtship. The 
Yorkshirernan contrived to make him- 
self agreeable to every body belonging 
to his dark-eyed divinity, lie fiattered 


89 

their weaknesses, he gratified their ca- 
prices, he studied their wishes, and })aid 
them all such insidious court, that Pm 
afraid invidious comparisons were drawn 
between John and Talbot, to the disad- 
vantage of the proud young officer. 

It was impossible for any quarrel to 
arise between the lovers, for John fol- 
lowed his mistress about like some big 
slave, who only lived to do her bidding; 
and Aurora accepted his devotion with 
a Sultana-like grace, which became her 
amazingly. Once more she visited the 
stables and inspected her father’s stud, 
for the first time since she had left Fel- 
deii for the Parisian finishing school. 
Once more she rode across country, 
wearing a hat which provoked consider- 
able criticism, — a hat which was no 
other than the now universal turban, or 
pork-pie, but which was new to the world 
in the autumn of fifty-eight. Her earlier 
girlhood appeared to return to her once 
more. It seemed almost as if the two 
yeais and a half in which she had left 
and returned to her home, and had met 
and parted with Talbot Bulstrode, had 
been blotted from her life, leaving her 
spirits fresh and bright as they were be- 
fore that stormy interview in her father’s 
study in the June of fifty-six. 

The county families came to the wed- 
ding at Beckenham church, and were 
fain to confess that Miss Floyd looked 
wondrously handsome in her virginal 
crown of orange-buds and flowers, and 
her voluminous Mechlin veil ; she had 
pleaded hard to be married in a bonnet, 
but had been overruled by a posse of 
female cousins. Mr. Richard Gunter 
provided the marriage-feast, and sent a 
man down to Felden to superintend the 
arrangements, who was more dashing 
and splendid to look upon than any of 
the Kentish guests. John Mellish alter- 
nately laughed and cried throughout 
that eventful morning. Heaven knows 
how many times he shook hands with 
Archibald Floyd, carrying the banker 
off into solitary corners, and swearing, 
with the tears running down his broad 
cheeks, to be a good husband to the old 
man’s daughter; so that it must have 
been a relief to the white-haired old 
Scotchman when Aurora descended the 
staircase, rustling in violet moire antique, 
and surrounded by her bridesmaids, to 
take leave of this dear father before the 


90 


AURORA F.LOYD. 


prancing steeds carried Mr. and Mrs. 
Mellish to that most prosaic of Hyme- 
nial stages, the London Bridge Sta- 
tion. 

Mrs. Mellish I Yes, she was Mrs. 
Mellish now. Talbot Bulstrode read of 
her marriage in that very column of the 
newspaper in which he had thought per- 
haps to see her death. How flatly the 
romance ended I With what a dull ca- 
dence the storm died out, and what a 
commonplace, gray, every-day sky suc- 
ceeded the terrors of the lightning 1 
Less than a year since, the globe had 
seemed to him to collapse, and creation 
to come to a standstill because of his 
trouble; aivd he was now in Parliament, 
legislating for the Cornish miners, and 
getting stout, his ill-natured friends said ; 
and she — she who ought, in accordance 
with all dramatic propriety, to have died 
out of hand long before this, she had 
married a Yorkshire landowner, and 
would no doubt take her place in the 
county and play My Lady Bountiful in 
the village, and be chief patroness at 
the race-balls, and live happily ever 
afterwards. He crumpled the Times 
newspaper, and flung it from him in his 
rage and mortification. “And I once 
thought that she loved me,” he cried. 

And she did love you, Talbot Bul- 
strode ; loved you as she can never love 
this honest, generous, devoted John 
Mellish, though she may by and by be- 
stow upon him an affection which is a 
great deal better worth having. She 
loved you with the girl’s romantic fancy 
and reverent admiration ; and tried hum- 
bly to fashion her very nature anew, that 
she might be worthy of your sublime ex- 
cellence. She loved you as women only 
love in their first youth, and as they 
rarely love the men they ultimately 
marry. The ^ree is perhaps all the 
stronger when these first frail branches 
are lopped away to give place to strong 
and spreading arms, beneath which a 
husband and children may shelter. 

But Talbot could not see all this. He 
saw nothing but that brief announce- 
ment in the Times: “Aurora, only 
daughter of Archibald Floyd, Banker, 
of Felden Woods, Kent, to John Mel- 
lish, Esq,, of Mellish Park, near Don- 
caster.” He was angry with his some- 
time love, and more angry with himself 
for feeling that anger ; and he plunged 


furiously into blue-books, to prepare 
himself for the coming session ; and 
again he took his gun and went out upon 
the “barren, barren moorland,” as he 
had done in the first violence of his grief, 
and wandered down to the dreary sea- 
shore, where he raved about his “Amy, 
shallow-hearted,” and tried the pitch of 
his voice against the ides of February 
should come round, and the bill for the 
Cornish miners be laid before the 
Speaker. 

Towards the close of January, the 
servants at Mellish Park prepared for 
the advent of Master John and Ids bride. 
It was a work of love in that disorderly 
household, for it pleased them that mas- 
ter would have some one to keep him at 
home, and that the county would be en- 
tertained, and festivals held in the roomy, 
rambling mansion. Architects, u})hol- 
sterers, and d-ecorators had been busy 
through the short winter days preparing 
a suite of apartments for Mrs. Mellish ; 
and the western, or as it was called the 
Gothic, wing of the house had been re- 
stored and remodeled for Aurora, until 
the oak-roofed chambers blazed with 
rose-color and gold, like a medieval 
chapel. If John could have expended 
half his fortune in the. purchase of a 
roc’s egg to hang in these apartments, 
he would have gladly done so. He was 
so proud of his Oleopatra-like bride, his 
jewel beyond all parallel amid all gems, 
that he fancied he could not build a 
shrine rich enough for his treasure. So 
the house in which honest country 
squires and their sensible motherly wives 
had lived contentedly for nearly three 
centuries was almost pulled to pieces, 
before John thought it worthy of the 
banker’s daughter. The trainers and 
grooms and stable-boys shrugged their 
shoulders superciliously, and spat frag- 
ments of straw disdainfully upon the 
paved stable-yard, as they heard the 
clatter of the tools of stonemasons and 
glaziers busy about the fagade of the re- 
stored apartments. The stable would 
be naught now, they supposed, and Mas- 
ter Mellish would be always tied to his 
wife’s apron-string. It was a relief to 
them to hear that Mrs. Mellish was fond 
of riding and hunting, and would no 
doubt take to horse-racing in due time, 
as the legitimate taste of a lady of posi- 
tion and fortune. 


AURORA FLOYD. 


The bells of the village-church rang; 
loudly and joyously in the clear winter 
air as the carriage-and-four, which had 
met John and his bride at Doncaster, 
dashed into the gates of Mellish Park 
and up the long avenue to the semi- 
gothic, semi-barbaric portico of the great 
door. Hearty Yorkshire voices rang 
out in loud cheers of welcome as Aurora 
stepped from the carriage, and passed 
under the shadow of the porch and into 
the old oak-hall, which had been hung 
with evergreens and adorned with floral 
devices ; amongst which figured the le- 
gend, “Wellcome to Mellish!’’ and 
other such friendly inscriptions, more 
conspicuous for their kindly meaning 
than their strict orthography. The ser- 
vants were enraptured with their master’s 
choice. She was so brightly handsome, 
that the simple-hearted creatures ac- 
cepted her beauty as we accept the sun- 
light, and felt a genial warmth in that 
radiant loveliness, which the most classi- 
cal perfection could never have inspired. 
Indeed, a Grrecian outline might have 
been thrown away upon the Yorkshire 
servants, whose uncultivated tastes were 
a great deal more disposed to recognize 
splendor of color than purity of form. 
They could not choose but admire Au- 
rora’s eyes, which they unanimously de- 
clared to be “ regular shiners and the 
flash of her white teeth, glancing be- 
tween the full crimson lips ; and the 
bright flush which lighted up her pale 
olive skin ; and the purple lustre of her 
massive coronal of plaited hair. Her 
beauty w^as of that luxuriant and splen- 
did order which has always most effect 
upon the masses, and the fascination of 
her manner was almost akin to sorcery 
in its power over simple people. I lose 
myself when I try to describe the femi- 
nine intoxications, the wonderful fascina- 
tion exercised by this dark-eyed siren. 
Sprely the secret of her power to charm 
must have been the wonderful vitality of 
her nature, by virtue of which she carried 
life and animal spirits about with her as 
an atmosphere, till dull people grew 
merry by reason of her contagious pre- 
sence ; or perhaps the true charm of her 
manner was that childlike and exquisite 
unconsciousness of self which made her 
for ever a new creature ; for ever impul- 
sive and sympathetic, acutely sensible 


91 

of all sorrow in others, though of a na- 
ture originally joyous in the extreme. 

Mrs. Walter Powell had been trans- 
ferred from Felden Woods to Mellish 
Park, and was comfortably installed in 
her prim apartments when the bride 
and bridegroom arrived. The York- 
shire housekeeper was to abandon the 
executive power to the ensign’s widow, 
who was to take all trouble of adminis- 
tration off Aurora’s hands. 

“ Heaven help your friends if they 
ever had to eat a dinner of my order- 
ing, John,” Mrs. Mellish said, making 
free confession of her ignorance ; “I am 
glad, too, that we have no occasion to 
turn the poor soul out upon the world 
once more. Those long columns of ad- 
vertisements in the Times give me a 
sick pain at my heart when I think of 
what a governess must have to encoun- 
ter. I cannot loll back in my carriage 
and be 'grateful for my advantages,’ as 
Mrs. Alexander says, when I remember 
the sufferings of others. I am rather 
inclined to be discontented with my lot, 
and to think it a poor thing, after all, to 
be rich and happy in a world where so 
many must suffer ; so I am glad we can 
give Mrs. Powell something to do at 
Mellish Park.” 

The ensign’s widow rejoiced very mucli 
in that she was to be retained in such 
comfortable quarters; but she did not 
thank Aurora for the benefits received 
from the open hands of the banker’s 
daughter. She did not thank her, be- 
cause — she hated her. Why did she 
hate her ? She hated her for the very 
benefits she received, or rather because 
she, Aurora, had power to bestow such 
benefits. She hated her as such slow, 
sluggish, narrow-minded creatures al- 
ways hate the frank and generous ; 
hated her as envy will for ever hate pros- 
perity ; as Haman hated Mordecai from 
the height of his throne, and as the man 
of Haman nature would hate were he 
supreme in the universe. If Mrs. Walter 
Powell had been a duchess, and Aurora 
a crossing-sweeper, she would still have 
envied her; she would have envied her 
glorious eyes and flashing teeth, her impe- 
rial carriage and generous soul. This 
pale, whity-brown haired woman felt her- 
self contemptible in the presence of Auro- 
ra, and she resented the bounteous vitality 


AURORA FLOYD. 


92 

of this nature which made her conscious 
of the slup:gishness of her own. She 
detested Mrs. Mellish for the possession 
of attributes which she felt were richer 
gifts than all the wealth of the house of 
Floyd, Floyd, and Floyd melted into 
one mountain of ore. But it is not for 
a dependent to hate, except in a deco- 
rous and gentlewomanly manner — secret- 
ly, in the dim recesses of her soul ; while 
she dresses her face with an unvarying 
smile — a smile which she puts on every 
morning with her clean collar, and takes 
off at night when she goes to bed. 

Now as, by an all- wise dispensation 
of Providence, it is not possible for one 
person so to hate another without that 
other, having a vague consciousness of 
the deadly sentiment, Aurora felt that 
Mrs. Powell’s attachment to her was of 
no very profound nature. But the reck- 
less girl did not seek to fathom the 
depth of any inimical feeling which 
might lurk in her dependent’s breast. 

“She is not very fond of me, poor 
soul,” she said; “and I dare say I tor- 
ment and annoy her with my careless 
follies. If I were like that dear con- 
siderate little Lucy now—” And with 
a shrug of her shoulders, and an un- 
finished sentence such as this, Mrs. Mel- 
lish dismissed the insignificant subject 
from her mind. 

You cannot expect these grand, cou- 
rageous creatures to be frightened of 
quiet people. And yet, in the great 
dramas of life, it is the quiet people who 
do the mischief. lago was not a noisy 
person, though, thank Heaven I it is no 
longer the fashion to represent him an 
oily sneak, whom even the most foolish 
of Moors could not have trusted. 

Aurora w^as at peace. The storms 
that had so nearly shipwrecked her 
young life had passed away, leaving her 
upon a fair and fertile shore. What- 
ever griefs she had inflicted upon her 
father’s devoted heart had not been mor- 
tal ; and the old banker seemed a very 
happy man when he came, in the bright 
April weather, to see the young couple 
at Mellish Park. Amongst all the 
hangers-on of that large establishment 
there' w'as only one person who did not 
join in the general voice when Mrs. 
Mellish was spoken of, and that one 
person was so very insignificant that his 
fellow-servants scarcely cared to ascer- 


tain his opinion. He was a man of 
about forty, who had been born at Mel- 
lish Park, and had pottered about the 
stables from his babyhood, doing odd 
jobs for the grooms, and being reckoned, 
although a little “fond” upon common 
matters, a very acute judge of horse- 
flesh. This man was called Stephen, 
or, more commonly, Steeve Hargraves. 
He was a squat, broad-shouldered fellow, 
with a big head, a pale haggard face — 
a face whose ghastly pallor seemed al- 
most unnatural — reddish-brown eyes, 
and bushy, sandy eyebrbws, which 
formed a species of penthouse over those 
sinister-looking eyes. He was the sort 
of man who is generally called repul- 
sive — a man from whom you reCoilVith 
a feeling of instinctive dislike, which is, 
no doubt, both wicked and unjust : for 
we have no right to take objection to a 
man because he has an ugly glitter in 
his eyes, and shaggy tufts of red hair 
meeting on the bridge of his nose, and 
big splay feet, which seem made to 
crush and destroy whatever comes in 
their way; and this was what Aurora 
Mellish thought when, a few days after 
her arrival at the Park, she saw Steeve 
Hargraves for the first time, coming out 
of the harness-room with a bridle across 
his arm. She was angry with herself 
for the involuntary shudder with which 
she drew back at the sight of this man, 
who stood at a little distance polishing 
the brass ornaments upon a set of har- 
ness, and furtively regarding Mrs. Mel- 
lish as she leaned on her husband’s arm, 
talking to the trainer about the foals at 
grass in the meadows outside the Park. 

Aurora asked who the man was. 

“Why, his name is Hargraves, ma’am,” 
answered the trainer ; “ but we call him 
Steeve. He’s a little bit touched in the 
upper story — a little bit ‘ fond,’ as we 
call it here ; but he’s useful about the 
stables when he pleases, for he’s rather 
a queer temper, and there’s none of us 
has ever been able to get the upper hand 
of him, as master knows.” 

John Mellish laughed. 

“No,” lie said; “Steeve has pretty 
much his own way in the stables, I fancy. 
He was a favorite groom of my father 
twenty years ago ; but he got a fall in the 
hunting-field, which did him some injury 
about the head, and he’s never been 
quite right since. Of course this, with 


AURORA FLOYD. 


93 


ray poor father’s regard for him, gives 
him a claim upon us, and we put up 
with his queer ways, don’t we, Lang- 
ley ?” 

“Well, we do, sir,” said the trainer; 
“ though, upon my honor, I’m some- 
times half afraid of him, and think he’ll 
get up in the middle of the night and 
murder some of us.” 

“Not till some of you have won a 
hatful of money, Langley. Steeve’s a 
little too fond of the brass to murder 
any of you for nothing. You shall see 
his face light up presently, Aurora,” said 
John, beckoning to the stable-man. 
“ Come here, Steeve. Mrs. Mellish 
wishes you to drink her health.” 

He dropped a sovereign into the man’s 
broad muscular palm — the hand of a 
gladiator, with horny flesh and sinews 
of iron. Steeve’s red eyes glistened as 
his fingers closed upon the money. 

“ Thank you, kindly, my lady,” he 
said, touching his cap. 

He spoke in a low subdued voice, 
which contrasted so strangely with the 
physical power manifest in his appear- 
ance that Aurora drew back with a start. 

Unhappily for this poor “fond” crea- 
ture, whose person was in itself repul- 
sive, there was something in this inward, 
semi-whispering voice which gave rise 
to an instinctive dislike in those who 
heard him speak for the first time. 

He touched his greasy woollen cap 
once more, and went slowly back to his 
work. 

“How white his face is I” said Au- 
rora. “ Has he been ill ?” 

“ No. He has had that pale face ever 
since his fall. I was too young when it 
happened to remember much about it ; 
but 1 have heard my father say, that 
when they brought the poor creature 
home, his fiice, which had been florid 
before, ^yas as white as a sheet of writ- 
ing-paper, and his voice, until that period 
strong and gruff, was reduced to the 
half-whisper in which he now speaks. 
The doctors did all they could for him, 
and carried him through an awful attack 
of brain fever ; but they could never 
bring back his voice, nor the color to 
his cheeks.” 

“Poor fellow I” said Mrs. Mellish, 
gently ; “ho is very much to be pitied.” 

She was reproaching herself, as she 
said this, for that feeling of repugnance 


which she could not overcome. It was 
a repugnance closely allied to terror; 
she felt as if she could scarcely be happy 
at Mellish Park while that man was on 
the premises. She was half-inclined to 
beg her indulgent husband to pension 
him off, and send him to the otlier end 
of the county ; but the next moment she 
was ashamed of her childish folly, and 
a few hours afterwards had forgotten 
Steeve Hargraves, the “softy,” as he 
was politely called in the stables. 

Reader, when any creature inspires 
you with this instinctive unreasoning 
abhorrence, avoid that creature. He is 
dangerous. Take warning, as you take 
warning by the clouds in the sky, and 
the ominous stillness of the atmosphere 
when there is a storm coming. Nature 
cannot lie ; and it is nature which has 
planted that shuddering terror in your 
breast; an instinct of self-preservation 
rather than of cowardly fear, which at 
the first sight of some fellow-creature 
tells you more plainly than words can 
speak, “ That man is my enemy 1” 

Had Aurora suffered herself to be 
guided by this instinct; had she given 
way to the impulse which she despised 
as childish, and caused Stephen Har- 
graves to be dismissed from Mellish 
Park, what bitter misery, what cruel 
anguish, might have been spared to her- 
self and others. 

The mastiff Bow-wow had accompa- 
nied his mistress to her new home ; 
but Bow-Wow’s best days were done. 
A month before Aurora’s marriage he 
had been run over by a pony-carriage 
in one of the roads about Felden, and 
had been conveyed, bleeding and disa- 
bled, to the veterinary surgeon’s, to have 
one of his hind-legs put into splints, 
and to be carried through his sufferings 
by the highest available skill in the sci- 
ence of dog-doctoring. Aurora drove 
every day to Croydon to see her sick 
favorite ; and at the worst Bow-wow 
was always well enough to recognize his 
Jbeloved mistress, and roll his listless, 
feverish tongue over her white hands, in 
token of that unchanging brute affection 
which can only perish with life. So the 
mastiff was quite lame as well as half 
blind when he arrived at Mellish Park, 
with the rest of Aurora’s goods and 
chattels. He was a privileged creature 
in the roomy mansion ; a tiger-skin was 


AURORA FLOYD. 


94 

spread for him upon the hearth in the 
drawing-room, and he spent his declining 
days in luxurious repose, basking in the 
fire-light or sunning himself in the win- 
dows, as it pleased his royal fancy ; but, 
feeble as he was, always able to limp 
after Mrs. Mellish when she walked on 
the lawn or in the woody shrubberies 
which skirted the gardens. 

One day, when she had returned from 
her morning’s ride with John and her 
father, who accompanied them some- 
times upon a quiet gray cob, and seemed 
a younger man for the exercise, she lin- 
gered on the lawn in her riding;habit 
after the horses had been taken back to 
the stables, and Mr. Mellish and his 
father-in-law had reentered the house. 
The mastiff saw her from the drawing- 
room window, and crawled out to wel- 
come her. Tempted by the exquisite 
softness of the atmosphere, she strolled, 
with her riding-habit gathered under her 
arm and her whip in her hand, looking 
for primroses under the clumps of trees 
upon the lawn. She gathered a cluster 
of wild-flowers, and was returning to 
the house, when she remembered some 
directions respecting a favorite pony 
that was ill, which she had omitted to 
give to her groom. 

She crossed the stable-yard, followed 
by Bow-wow, found the groom, gave 
him her orders, and went back to the 
gardens. While talking to the man, she 
bad recognized the white face of Steeve 
Hargraves at one of the windows of the 
harness-room. He came out while she 
was giving her directions, and carried a 
set of harness across to a coach-house on 
the opposite side of the quadrangle. 
Aurora was on the threshold of the gates 
opening from the stables into the gar- 
dens, when she was arrested by a howl 
of pain from the mastiff Bow-wow. 
Rapid as lightning in every movement, 
she turned round in time to see the cause 
of this cry. Steeve Hargraves had sent 
the animal reeling away from him with 
a kick from his iron-bound clog. Cruel-, 
ty to animals was one of the failings of 
the “softy.” He was not cruel to the 
Mellish horses, for he had sense enough 
to know that his daily bread depended 
upon his attention to them ; but Heaven 
help any outsider that came in his way. 
Aurora sprang upon him like a beautiful 
tigress, and catching the collar of his 


fustian jacket in her slight hands, rooted 
him to the spot upon which he stood. 
The grasp of those slender hands, con- 
vulsed by passion, was not to be easily 
shaken off ; and Steeve Hargraves, taken 
completely off his guard, stared aghast 
at his assailant. Taller than the stable- 
man by a foot and a half, she towered 
above him, her cheeks white with rage, 
her eyes flashing fury, her hat fallen off, 
and her black hair tumbling about her 
shoulders, sublime in her passion. 

The man crouched beneath the grasp 
of the imperious creature. 

“ Let me go,” he gasped, in his inward 
whisper, which had a hissing sound in 
his agitation; “let me go, or you’ll be 
sorry ; let me go !” 

“How dared you 1” cried. Aurora, — 
“ how dared you hurt him ? My poor 
dog ! My poor lame, feeble dog ! How 
dared you do it ? You cowardly das- 
tard ! you — ” 

She disengaged her right hand from 
his collar and rained a shower of blows 
upon his clumsy shoulders with her slen- 
der whip ; a mere toy, with emeralds set 
in its golden head, but stinging like a 
rod of flexible steel in that little hand. 

“ How dared you I” she repeated 
again and again, her cheeks changing 
from white to scarlet in the effort to 
hold the man with one hand. Her tan- 
gled hair had fallen to her waist by this 
time, and the whip was broken in half- 
a-dozen places. 

John Mellish, entering the stable-yard 
by chance at this very moment, turned 
white with horror at beholding the 
beautiful fury. 

“ Aurora ! Aurora I” he cried, snatch- 
ing the man’s collar from her grasp, 
and hurling him half-a-dozen paces off. 
“Aurora, what is it?” 

She told him in broken gasps the 
cause of her indignation. He took the 
splintered whip from her hand, picked 
up her hat which she had trodden upon 
in her rage, and led her across the yard 
towards the back entrance to the house. 
It was such bitter shame to him to think 
that this peerless, this adored creature 
should do any thing to bring disgrace or 
even ridicule upon herself. He would 
have stripped off his coat and fought 
with half-a-dozen coal-heavers, and 
thought nothing of it ; but that she — 

“ Go in, go in, my darling girl,” he 


AURORA FLOYD. 


95 


said, with sorrowful tenderness ; “ the 
servants are peepinp^ and prying about, 
I dare say. You'should not have done 
this ; you should have told me.” 

‘‘I should have told you !” she cried 
impatiently. “ How could I stop to tell 
you when I saw him strike my dog, my 
poor lame dog 

“ Go in, darling, go in ! There, there, 
calm yourself, and go in.” 

He spoke as if he had been trying to 
soothe an agitated child, for he saw by 
the convulsive heaving of her breast that 
the violent emotion would terminate in 
hysteria, as all womanly fury must, sooner 
or later. He half-led, half-carried her 
up a back staircase to her own room, 
and left her lying on a sofa in her riding- 
habit. He thrust the broken whip into 
his pocket, and then, setting his strong 
white teeth and clenching his fist, went 
to look for Stephen Hargraves. As he 
crossed the hall in his way out, he se- 
lected a stout leather-thonged hunting- 
whip from a stand of formidable imple- 
ments. Steeve, the softy, was sitting 
on a horse-block when John reentered 
the stable-yard. He was rubbing his 
shoulders with a very doleful face, while 
a couple of grinning stable-boys, who 
had perhaps witnessed his chastisement, 
watched him from a respectful distance. 
They had no inclination to go too near 
him just then, for the softy had a playful 
habit of brandishing a big clasp-knife 
when he felt himself aggrieved ; and the 
bravest lad in the stables had no wish to 
die from a stab in the abdomen, with the 
pleasant conviction that his murderer’s 
heaviest punishment might be a fort- 
night’s imprisonment or an easy fine. 

“ Now, Mr. Hargraves,” said John 
Mellish, lifting the softy off the horse- 
block and planting him at a convenient 
distance forgiving full play to the hunt- 
ing-whip, “it wasn’t Mrs. Mellish’s busi- 
ness to horsewhip you, but it was her 
duty to let me do it for her ; so take 
that, you coward.” 

The leathern thong whistled in the 
air, and curled about Steeve’s shoulders ; 
but John felt there was something des- 
picable in the unequal contest. He 
threw the whip away, and, still holding 
him by the collar, conducted the softy 
to the gates of the stable-yard. 

“You see that avenue,” he said, 
pointing down to a fair glade that 


stretched before them ; “it leads pretty 
straight out of the Park, and I strongly 
recommend you, Mr. Stephen Hargrave, 
to get to the end of it as fast as ever 
you can, and never to show your ugly 
white face upon an inch of ground be- 
longing to me again. D’ye hear.” 

“E-es, sir.” 

“ Stay I I suppose there’s wages or 
something due to you.” He took a 
handful of money from his waistcoat- 
pocket and threw it on the ground, 
sovereigns and half-crowns rolling hi- 
ther and thither on the gravel-path ; 
then turning on his heel, he left the 
softy to pick up the scattered treasure. 
Steeve Hargraves dropped on his knees, 
anckgroped about till he had found the 
last coin ; then, as he slowly counted 
the money from one hand into the other, 
his white face relapsed into a grin ; 
John Mellish had given him gold and 
silver amounting to upwards of two 
years of his ordinary wages. 

He walked a few paces down the 
avenue, and then looking back shook 
his fist at the house he was leaving be- 
him. 

“ You’re a fine-spirited madam, Mrs. 
John Mellish, sure enough,” he mut- 
tered ; “ but never you give me a chance 
of doing you any mischief, or by the 
Lord, fond as I am. I’ll do it I They 
think the softy’s up to naught, perhaps, 
'Wait a bit.” 

He took his money from his pocket 
again, and counted it once more, as he 
walked slowly towards the gates of the 
Park. 

It will be seen, therefore, that Aurora 
had two enemies, one without and one 
within her pleasant home : one for ever 
broodi.ng discontent and hatred within 
the holy circle of the domestic hearth ; 
the other plotting ruin and vengeance 
without the walls of the citadel. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

THE SPRING MEETING. 

The early spring brought Lucy Floyd 
on a visit to her cousin, a wondering 
witness of the happiness that reigned at 
Mellish Park. 


96 


AURORA FLOYD. 


Poor Lucy had expected to find Au- 
rora held as something better than tlie 
dogs, and a little higher than the horses, 
in that Yorkshire household ; and was 
considerably surprised to find her dark- 
eyed cousin a despotic and capricious 
sovereign, reigning with undisputed sway 
over every creature, biped or quadruped, 
upon the estate. She was surprised to 
see the bright glow in her cheeks, the 
merry sparkle in her eyes ; surprised to 
hear the light tread of her footstep, the 
gushing music of her laugh ; surprised, 
ill fact, to discover that, instead of weep- 
ing over the dry bones of her dead love 
for Talbot Bulstrode, Aurora had learned 
to love her husband. 

Have I any need to be ashamed of my 
heroine in that she had forgotten her 
straight-nosed, gray-eyed Cornish lover, 
who had set his pride and his pedigree 
between himself and his affection, and 
had loved her at best with a reservation, 
although heaven only knows how dearly 
he had loved her ? Have I any cause 
to blush for this poor, impetuous girl if, 
turning in the sickness of her sorrowful 
heart with a sense of relief and gratitude 
to the honest shelter of John’s love, she 
had quickly learnt to feel for him an 
affection which repaid him a thousand- 
fold for his long-suffering devotion ? 
Surely it would have been impossible 
for any true-hearted woman to withhold 
some such repayment for such a love as 
that which in every word, and look, and 
thought, and deed, John Mellish bestow- 
ed upon his wife. How could she be 
for ever his creditor for such a boundless 
debt ? Are hearts like his common 
amongst our clay f Is it a small thing 
to be beloved with this loyal and pure 
affection ? Is it laid so often at the feet 
of any mortal woman that she should 
spurn and trample upon the holy offer- 
ing ? 

He had loved ; and more, he had 
trusted her. He had trusted her, when 
the man who passionately loved her had 
left her in an agony of doubt and de- 
spair. The cause of this lay in the dif- 
ference between the two men. John 
Mellish had as high and stern a sense 
of honor as Talbot Bulstrode ; but while 
the proud Cornishman’s strength of brain 
lay in the reficctive faculties, the York- 
shirernan’s acute intellect was strongest 
in its power of perception. Talbot 


drove himself half mnd witli imagining 
what might he; John saw what teas; 
and he saw, or fancied he saw, that the 
woman he loved was worthy of all love : 
and he gave his peace and honor freely 
into her keeping. 

He had his reward. He had his re- 
ward in her frank womanly affection, 
and in the delight of seeing that she 
was happy ; no cloud upon her face, no 
shadow on her life, but ever-beaming 
joy in her eyes, ever-changing smiles 
upon her lips. She was happy in the 
calm security of her home, happy in that 
pleasant stronghold in which she was so 
fenced about and guarded by love and 
devotion. I do not know that she ever 
felt any romantic or enthusiastic love for 
this big Yorkshireman ; but I do know 
that from the first hour in which she laid 
her head upon his broad breast she was 
true to him — true as a wife should be ; 
true in every thought ; true in the merest 
shadow of a thought. A wide gulf 
yawned around the altar of her home, 
separating her from every other man in 
the universe, and leaving her alone with 
that one man whom she had accepted as 
her husband. She had accepted him in 
the truest and purest sense of the word. 
She had accepted him from the hand of 
God, as the protector and shellerer of 
her life ; and morning and night, upon 
her knees, she thanked the gracious 
Creator who had made this man for her 
help-meet. 

But after duly setting down all this, I 
have to confess that poor John Mellish 
was cruelly henpecked. Such big, blus- 
tering fellows are created to be the much- 
enduring subjects of petticoat goverh- 
rnent ; and they carry the rosy garlands 
until their dying hour with a sublime 
unconsciousness that those floral chains 
arc not very easy to be broken. Your 
little man is self-assertive, and for ever 
on his guard against womanly domina- 
tion. All tyrannical husbands on record 
have been little men, from Mr. Daniel 
Quilp upwards ; but who could ever con- 
vince a fellow of six foot two in his 
stockings.that he.was afraid of his wife? 
He submits to the pretty tyrant with a 
quiet smile of resignation. What does 
it matter ? She is so little, so fragile ; 
he could break that tiny wrist with one 
twist of his big thumb and finger ; and 
in the meantime, till the affairs get des* 


AURORA FLOYD. 


97 


perate, and such measures become ne- 
cessary, it’s as well to let her have her 
own way. 

John Mellish did not even debate the 
point. He loved her, and he laid him- 
self down to be trampled upon by her 
gracious feet. Whatever she did or said 
was charming, bewitching, and wonder- 
ful to him. If she ridiculed and laughed 
at him, her laughing was the sweetest 
harmony in creation ; and it pleased him 
to think that his absurdities could give 
birth to such music. If she lectured him, 
she arose to the sublimity of a priestess, 
and he listened to her and worshiped her 
as the most noble of living creatures. 
And with all this, his innate manliness 
of character preserved him from any taint 
of that quality our argot has christened 
spooneyism. It was only those who 
knew him well and watched him closely 
who could fathom the full depths of his 
tender w'eakness. The noblest senti- 
ments approach most nearly to the uni- 
versal, and this love of John’s was in a 
manner universal. It was the love of 
husband, father, mother, brother, melted 
into one comprehensive aflection. He 
had a mother’s weak pride in Aurora, a 
mother’s foolish vanity in the wonderful 
creature, the rara avis he had won from 
her nest to be his wife. If Mrs. Mellish 
was complimented while John stood 
by, he simpered like a school-girl who 
blushes at a handsome man’s first flatte- 
ries. I’m afraid he bored his male ac- 
quaintance about “ ray wife her mar- 
vellous leap over the bullfinch; the plan 
she drew for the new stables, “ which the 
architect said was a better plan than he 
could have drawn himself, sir, by Gad” 
(a clever man, that Doncaster architect); 
the surprising manner she had discovered 
the fault ill the chestnut colt’s off fore- 
leg ; the pencil sketch she had made of 
her dog Bow-wow (“ Sir Edwin Land- 
seer might have been proud of such spirit 
lind dash, sir”). All these things did 
the country gentlemen hear, until, per- 
haps, they grew a shade weary of John’s 
talk of “my wife.” But they were never 
weary of Aurora herself. She took her 
place at once among them ; and they 
bowed down to her and worshiped her, 
envying John Mellish the ownership of 
such a high-bred filly, as I fear they were 
but likely, unconsciously, to designate 
my black-eyed heroine. 

6 


The domain over which Aurora found 
herself empress was no inconsiderable 
one. John Mellish had inherited an es- 
tate which brought him an income of 
something between sixteen and seven- 
teen thousand a year. Far-away farms, 
upon wide Yorkshire wolds and fenny 
Lincolnshire flats, owned him master ; 
and the intricate secrets of his posses- 
sions were scarcely known to himself, — 
known, perhaps, to none but his land- 
steward and solicitor, a grave gentleman 
who lived in Doncaster, and drove about 
once a fortnight down to Mellish Park, 
much to the horror of its light-hearted 
master, to whom “business” was a ter- 
rible bugbear. Not that I would have 
the reader for a moment imagine John 
Mellish an empty-headed blockhead, 
with no comprehension save for his own 
daily pleasures. He was not a reading 
man, nor a business man, nor a politician, 
nor a student of the natural sciences. 
There was an observatory in the Park ; 
but John had fitted it up as a smoking- 
room, the revolving openings in the roof 
being very convenient for letting out 
the effluvia of his guests’ cheroots and 
Havanas ; Mr. Mellish caring for the 
stars very much after the fashion of that 
Assyrian monarch who was content to 
see them shine, and thank their Maker 
for their beauty. He was not a spiritual- 
ist ; and unless one of the tables at Mel- 
lish could have given him “a tip” for 
the “Sellinger” or Great Ebor, he would 
have cared very little if every inch of 
walnut and rosewood in his house had 
grown oracular. But for all this he was 
no fool ; he had that brightly-clear intel- 
lect which very often accompanies per- 
fect honesty of purpose, and which is the 
very intellect of all others most success- 
ful in the discomfiture of all knavery. 
He was not a creature to despise, for 
his very weaknesses were manly. Per- 
haps Aurora felt this, and that it was 
something to rule over such a man. 
Sometimes, in an outburst of loving 
gratitude, she would nestle her handsome 
head upon his breast, — tall as she was, 
she was only tall enough to take shelter 
under his wing, — and tell him that he 
was the dearest and the best of men, and 
that, although she might love him to 
her dying day, she could never, never,. 
NEVER love him half as much as he de- 
served. After which, half ashamed of 


AURORA FLOYD. 


98 

herself for the sentimental declaration, 
she would alternately ridicule, lecture, 
and tyrannise over him for the rest of 
the day. 

Lucy beheld this state of things with 
silent bewilderment. Could the woman 
who had once been loved by Talbot 
Bulstrode sink to this^ The happy wife 
of a fair-haired Yorkshireman ; with 
her fondest wishes concentered in her 
namesake the bay filly, which was to run 
in a weight-for-age race at the York 
Bpring, and was entered for the ensuing 
Derby; interested in a tan gallop, anew 
stable; talking of mysterious but evi- 
dently all-important creatures, called by 
such names as Scott and Robert and 
Challoner; and to all appearance utterly 
forgetful of the fact that there existed 
upon the earth a divinity with fathomless 
gray eyes, known to mortals as the heir 
of Bulstrode. Poor Lucy was like to 
have been driven well-nigh demented by 
the talk about this bay filly, Aurora, as 
the Spring Meeting drew near. She 
was taken to see it every morning by 
Aurora and John, who, in their anxiety 
for the improvement of their favorite, 
looked at the animal upon each visit as 
if they expected some wonderful physi- 
cal transformation to have occurred in 
the stillness of the night. The loose 
box in which the filly was lodged was 
watched night and day by an amateur 
detective force of stable-boys and hang- 
ers-on ; and John Mellish once went so 
far as to dip a tumbler into the pail of 
water provided for the bay filly, Aurora, 
to ascertain, of his own experience, that 
the crystal fluid was innocuous ; for he 
grew nervous as the eventful day drew 
nigh, and was afraid of lurking danger 
to the filly from dark-minded touts who 
might have heard of her in London. I 
fear the touts troubled their heads very 
little about this graceful two-year old, 
though she had the blood of Old Mel- 
bourne and West Australian in her veins, 
to say nothing of other aristocracy upon 
the maternal side. The suspicious gen- 
tlemen hanging about York and Don- 
caster in those early April days were a 
great deal too much occupied with Lord 
Glasgow’s lot, and John Scott’s lot, and 
Lord Zetland’s and Mr. Merry’s lot, and 
other lots of equal distinction, to have 
much time to prowl about Mellish Park, 
or peer into that meadow which the 


[ young man had caused to be surrounded 
by an eight-foot fence for the privacy of 
the Derby winner in futuro. Lucy de- 
clared the filly to be the loveliest of 
creatures, and safe to win any number 
of cups and plates that might be offered 
for equine competition ; but she was al- 
ways glad, when the daily visit was over, 
to find herself safely out of reach of 
those high-bred hind-legs, which seemed 
to possess a faculty for being in all four 
corners of the loose box at one and the 
same moment. 

The first day of the Meeting came, 
and found half the Mellish household 
established at Y'ork ; John and his family 
at an hotel near the betting-rooms ; and 
the trainer, his satellites, and the filly, at 
a little inn close to the Knavesmire. 
Archibald Floyd did his best to be in- 
terested in the event which was so inter- 
esting to his children ; but he freely 
confessed to his grandniece, Lucy, that 
he heartily wished the Meeting over, and 
the merits of the bay filly decided. She 
had stood her trial nobly, John said ; 
not winning with a rush, it is true ; in 
point of fact, being in a manner beaten ; 
but evincing a power to stay, which 
promised better for the future than any 
two-year-old velocity. When the sad- 
dling-bell rang, Aurora, her father, and 
Lucy were stationed in the balcony, a 
crowd of friends about them ; Mrs. 
Mellish, with a pencil in her hand, put- 
ting down all manner of impossible bets 
in her excitement, and making such a 
book as might have been preserved as a 
curiosity in sporting annals. John was 
pushing in and out of the ring below, 
tumbling over small book--men in his 
agitation, dashing from the ring to the 
weighing-house, and hanging about the 
small pale-faced boy who was to ride the 
filly as anxiously as if the jockey had 
been a prime minister, and John a family- 
man with half a dozen sons in need of 
Government appointments. I tremble 
to think how many bonuses, in the way 
of five-pound notes, John promised this 
pale-faced lad, on condition that the 
stakes (some small matter amounting to 

about sixty pounds) were pulled off 

pulled off where, I wonder ? — by the 
bay filly Aurora. If the youth had not 
been of that preternatuial order of beings 
who seem born of an emotionless char- 
acter to wear silk for the good of their 


AURORA FLOYD. 


99 


fellow-men, his brain must certainly have 
been dazed by the variety of conflicting 
directions which John Mellish gave him 
within the critical last quarter of an 
hour ; but having received his orders 
early that morning from the trainer, ac- 
companied with a warning not to suffer 
himself to be tewed (Yorkshire patois 
for worried) by any thing Mr. Mellish 
might say, the sallow-complexioned lad 
walked about in the calm serenity of in- 
nocence, — there are honest jockeys in the 
world, thank Heaven ! — and took his 
seat in the saddle with as even a pulse 
as if he had been about to ride in an 
omnibus. 

There were some people upon the 
stand that morning who thought the face 
of Aurora Mellish as pleasant a sight as 
the smooth greensward of the Knaves- 
mire, or the best horse-flesh in the county 
of York. AH forgetful of herself in her 
excitement, with her natural vivacity 
multiplied by the animation of the scene 
before her, she was more than usually 
lovely ; and Archibald Floyd looked at 
her with a fond emotion, so intermingled 
with gratitude to Heaven for the happi- 
ness of his daughter’s destiny as to be 
almost akin to pain. She was happy ; 
she was thoroughly happy at last, — this 
child of his dead Eliza, this sacred charge 
left to him by the woman he had loved ; 
she was happy, and she was safe ; he 
could go to his grave resignedly to- 
morrow, if it pleased God, — knowing 
this. Strange thoughts, perhaps, for a 
crowded race-course ; but our most 
solemn fancies do not come always in 
solemn places. Nay, it is often in the 
midst of crowds and confusion that our 
souls wing their loftiest flights, and the 
saddest memories return to us. You 
see a man sitting at some theatrical 
entertainment with a grave, abstracted 
face, over which no change of those 
around him has any influence. He may 
be thinking of his dead wife, dead ten 
years ago ; he may be acting over well- 
remembered' scenes of joy and sorrow ; 
he may be recalling cruel words, never 
to be atoned for upon earth, angry looks 
gone to be registered against him in the 
skies, while his children are laughing at 
the clown on the stage below him. He 
may be moodily meditating inevitable 
bankruptcy or coming ruin, holding ima- 
ginary meetings with his creditors, and 


contemplating prussic acid upon the re- 
fusal of his certificate, while his eldest 
daughter is crying with Pauline Des- 
chapelles. So Archibald Floyd, while 
the numbers were going up, and the 
jockeys being weighed, and the book- 
men clamoring below him, leaned over 
the broad ledge of the stone balcony, 
and, looking far away across the grassy 
amphitheatre, thought of the dead wife 
who had bequeathed to him this precious 
daughter. 

The bay filly, Aurora, was beaten ig- 
riominiously. Mrs. Mellish turned white 
with despair as she saw the amber jacket, 
black belt, and blue cap crawling in at 
the heels of the ruck, the jockey looking 
pale defiance at the bystanders : as who 
should say that the filly had never been 
meant to win, and that the defeat of 
to-day was but an artfully-concocted 
ruse whereby fortunes were to be made 
in the future ? John Mellish, something 
used to such disappointments, crept 
away to hide his discomfiture outside 
the ring ; but Aurora dropped her card 
and pencil, and, stamping her foot upon 
the stone flooring of the balcony, told 
Lucy and the banker that it was a 
shame, and that the boy must have sold 
the race, as it was impossible the filly 
could have been fairly beaten. As she 
turned to say this, her cheeks flushed 
with passion, and her eyes flashing 
bright indignation on any one who 
might stand in the way to receive the 
angry, electric light, she became aware 
of a pale face and a pair of gray eyes 
earnestly regarding her from the thres- 
hold of an open window two or three 
paces off ; and in another moment both 
she and her father had recognized Tal- 
bot Bulstrode. 

The young man saw that he was re- 
cognized, and approached them, hat in 
hand — very, very pa^, as Lucy always 
remembered — and, with a voice that 
trembled as he spoke, wished the banker 
and the two ladies “Good day.” 

And it was thus that they met, these 
two who had “parted in silence and 
tears,” more than “half broken-hearted,” 
to sever, as they thought, for eternity; 
it was thus — upon this commonplace, 
prosaic, half-guinea Grand Stand — that 
Destiny brought them once more face to 
face. 

A year ago, and how eften in the 


A URGE A FLOYD. 


100 

spring twilight Aurora Floyd had pic- 
tured her possible meeting with Talbot 
Bulstrode I He would come upon her 
suddenly, perhaps, in the still moonlight, 
and she would swoon away and die at 
his feet of the unendurable emotion. 
Or they would meet in some crowded 
assembly; she dancing, laughing with 
hollow, simulated mirth; and the shock 
of one glance of those eyes would slay 
her in her painted glory of jewels and 
grandeur. How often, ah, how often 
she had acted tlie scene and felt the 
anguish 1 — only a year ago, less than a 
year ago, ay, even so lately as on that 
balmy September day when she had lain 
on the rustic couch at the Chateau 
d’Arques, looking down at the fair Nor- 
mandy landscape, with faithful John at 
watch by her side, the tame goats brows- 
ing upon the grassy platform behind 
her, and preternaturally ancient French 
children teasing the mild, long-suffering 
animals ; and to-day she met him with 
her thoughts so full of the horse that 
had just been beaten, that she scarcely 
knew what she said to her sometime 
lover. Aurora Floyd was dead and 
buried, and Aurora Mellish, looking 
critically at Talbot Bulstrode, wondered 
how any one could have ever gone near 
to the gates of death for the love of 
him. 

It was Talbot who grew pale at this 
unlooked-for encounter; it wms Talbot 
whose voice was shaken in the utterance 
of those few every-day syllables which 
common courtesy demanded of him. 
The captain had not st) easily learned 
to forget. He was older than Aurora^ 
and he had reached the age of two-and- 
thirty without having ever loved woman, 
only to be the more desperately attacked 
by the fatal disease when his time came, 
lie suffered acutely at that sudden meet- 
ing. Wounded in his pride by her se- 
rene indifference, dazzled afresh by her 
beauty, mad with jealous fury at the 
tl) ought that he had lost her. Captain 
Bulstrode’s feelings were of no very 
enviable nature; and if Aurora had ever 
wished to avenge that cruel scene at 
Felden Woods, her hour of vengeance 
had most certainly come. But she was 
too generous a creature to have har- 
bored such a thought. She had sub- 
mitted in all humility to Talbot’s de- 
cree ; she had accepted his decision, 


and had believed in its justice ; and see- 
ing his agitation to-day, she was sorry 
for him. She pitied him with a tender, 
matronly compassion, such as she, in 
the safe harbor of a happy home, might 
be privileged to feel for this poor wan- 
derer still at sea on life’s troubled ocean. 
Love, and the memory of love, must 
indeed have died before we can feel like 
this. The terrible passion must have 
died that slow and certain death, from 
the grave of which no haunting ghost 
ever returns to torment the survivors. 
It was, and it is not. Aurora might 
have been shipwrecked and cast on a 
desert island with Talbot Bulstrode, 
and might have lived ten years in his 
company, without ever feeling for ten 
seconds as she had felt for him once. 
With these' impetuous and impressiona- 
ble people, who live quickly, a year is 
sometimes as twenty years ; so Aurora 
looked back at Talbot Bulstrode across 
a gulf which stretched for w'eary miles 
between them, and wondered if they had 
really ever stood side by side, allied by 
hope and love, in the days that were 
gone. 

While Aurora was thinking of these 
things, as well as a little of the bay 
filly, and while Talbot, half-choked by a 
thousand confused emotions, tried to 
appear preternaturally at his ease, J ohn 
Mellish,. having refreshed his spirits 
with bottled beer, came suddenly upon 
the party, and slapped the captain on 
the back. 

He was not jealous, this happy John. 
Secure in his wife’s love and truth, he 
was ready to face a regiment of her old 
admirers; indeed, he rather delighted 
in the idea of avenging Aurora upon 
this cowardly lover. Talbot glanccui 
involuntarily at the members of the York 
constabulary on the course below ; won- 
dering how they would act if he were to 
fling John Mellish over the stone bal- 
cony, and do a murder then and there. 
He was thinking this while John was 
nearly wringing off his hand in cordial 
salutation, and asking what the deuce 
had brought him to the York Spring. 

Talbot explained rather lamely that, 
being knocked up by his Parliamentary 
work, he had come down to spend a few 
days with an old brother-officer. Captain 
Hunter, who had a place between York 
and Leeds. 


AURORA FLOYD. 


101 


Mr. Mellish declared that 
could be more lucky than this. 

Hunter well ; the two men must join 
them at dinner that day ; and Talbot 
must give them a week at the Park after 
he left the captain’s place. 

Talbot murmured some vague pro: 
testation of the impossibility of this, to 
which John paid no attention whatever, 
hustling his sometime rival away from 
the ladies in his eagerness to get back to 
the ring, where he had to complete his 
book for the next race. 

So Captain Bulstrode was gone once 
more, and throughout the brief inter- 
view no one had cared to notice Lucy 
Floyd who had been pale and red by 
turns half a dozen times within the last 
ten minutes. 

John and Talbot returned after the 
start, with Captain Hunter, who was 
brought on to the stand to be presented 
to Aurora, and who immediately enter- 
ed into a very animated discussion upon 
the day’s racing. How Captain Bul- 
Btrode abhorred this idle babble of horse- 
flesh ; this perpetual jargon, alike in 
every mouth — from Aurora’s rosy Cu- 
pid’s bow to the tobacco-tainted lips of 
the book-men in the ring 1 Thank Hea- 
ven, this was not his wife who knew all 
the slang of the course, and, with lorg- 
nette in hand, was craning her swan- 
like throat to catch a sight of a wind in 
the Kuavesmire and the horse that had 
a lead of half a mile. 

Why had he ever consented to come 
into this accursed horse-racing county ? 
Why had he deserted the Cornish mi- 
ners, even for a week ? Better to be 
wearing out his brains over Dryasdust 
pamphlets and Parliamentary minutes 
than to be here ; desolate amongst this 
shallow-minded, clamorous multitude, 
who have nothing to do but to throw 
up caps and cry huzza for any winner 
of any race. Talbot, as a bystander, 
could not but remark this, and draw 
from this something of a philosophical 
lesson on life. He saw that there was 
always the same clamor and the same 
rejoicing in the crowd, whether the win- 
ning jockey wore blue and black belt, 
yellow and black cap, white with scarlet 
spot-?, or any other variety of color, even 
to dismal sable ; and he could but won- 
der how this was. Did the unlucky 
speculators run away and hide them- 


while the uplifted voices w^ere re- 
When the w'elkin was rent 
with the name of Kettledrum, where 
were the men who had backed Dundee 
unflinchingly up to the dropping of the 
flag and the ringing of the bell ? When 
Thormanby came in with a rusli, where 
were the wretched creatures whose for- 
tunes hung on Umpire or Wizard ? 
They were voiceless, these poor un- 
lucky ones, crawling away with sick 
white faces to gather in groups, and ex- 
plain to ‘each other, with stable jargon 
intermingled with oaths, how it ought 
not to have been, and never could have 
been, but for some unlooked-for and 
preposterous combination of events 
never before witnessed upon any mortal 
course. How little is ever seen of the 
losers in any of the great races run upon 
this earth ? For years and years tlie 
name of Louis Napoleon is an empty 
sound, signifying nothing ; when, lo, a 
few master-strokes of policy and finesse, 
a little juggling with those pieces of 
pasteboard out of which are built the 
shaky card-palaces men call empires, 
and creation rings with the same name ; 
the outsider emerges from the ruck, and 
the purple jacket, spotted with golden 
bees, is foremost in the mighty race. 

Talbot Bulstrode leaned with folded 
arms upon the same balustrade, looking 
down at the busy life -below him and 
thinking of these things. Pardon him 
for his indulgence in dreary platitudes 
and worn-out sentimentalities. He w’as 
a desolate, purposeless man ; entered for 
no race himself ; scratched for the ma- 
trimonial stakes ; embittered by disap- 
poiiRment ; soured by doubt and sus- 
picion. He had spent the dull winter 
months upon the Continent, having no 
mind to go down to Bulstrode to en- 
counter his mother’s sympathy and his 
cousin Constance Trevyllian’s chatter. 
He was unjust enough to nourish a 
secret dislike to that young lady for the 
good service she had done him by re- 
vealing Aurora’s flight. 

Are we ever really grateful to the 
people who tell us of the iniquity of 
those we love ? Are we ever reallyjust 
to the kindly creatures who give us 
friendly warning of our danger ? No, 
never ! We hate them ; always invo- 
luntarily reverting to them as the first 
cause of our anguish ; always repeating 


nothing | selves 
He knew joicing? 


102 


AURORA FLOYD. 


to ourselves that, had they been silent, 
that anguish need never have been ; 
always ready to burst forth in one wild 
rage with the mad cry, that “ it is bet- 
ter to be much abused than but to 
know’t a little.” When the friendly 
Ancient drops his poisoned hints into 
poor Othello’s ear, it is not Mistress 
Desderaona, but lago himself, whom the 
noble Moor first has a mind to strangle. 
If poor innocent Constance Trevyllian 
had been born the veriest cur in the 
county of Cornwall, she would have had 
a better chance of winning Talbot’s re- 
gard than she had now. 

Why had he come into Y'orkshire ? 
I left that question unanswered just 
now, for I am ashamed to tell the rea- 
sons which actuated this unhapi)y man. 
He came, in a paroxysm of curiosity, to 
learn what kind of life Aurora led with 
her husband, John Mellish. He had 
suffered horrible distraction of mind 
upon this subject, one moment imagin- 
ing her the most despicable of coquet- 
tes, ready to marry any man who had a 
fair estate and a good position to offer 
her, and by and by depicting her as 
some white-robed Iphigenia, led a pas- 
sive victim to the sacrificial shrine. So, 
when happening to meet this good-na- 
tured brother officer at the United Ser- 
vice Club, he had consented to run down 
to Captain Hunter’s country place, for a 
brief respite from Parliamentary min- 
utes and red-tape, the artful hypocrite 
had never owned to himself that he 
was burning to hear tidings of his false 
and fickle love, and that it was some 
lingering fumes of the old intoxication 
that carried him down to Y’orkshire. 
But now, now that he met her — met her, 
the heartless, abominable creature, ra- 
diant and happy — mere simulated hap- 
piness and feverish mock 'radiance, no 
doubt, but too well put on to be quite 
pleasing to him , — now he knew her. 
He knew her at last, the wicked en- 
chantress, the soulless siren. He knew 
that she had never loved him ; that she 
was of course powerless to love ; good 
for nothing but to wreathe her white 
arms and flash the dark splendor of her 
eyes for a weak man’s destruction ; fit 
for nothing but to float in her beauty 
above the waves that concealed the 
bleached bones of her victims ! Poor 
John Mellish I Talbot reproached him- 


self for his hardness of heart in nourish- 
ing one spiteful feeling towards a man 
who was so deeply to be pitied. 

When the race was done, Captain 
Bulstrode turned, and beheld the black- 
eyed sorceress in the midst of a group 
gathered about a grave patriarch with 
gray hair and the look of one accustomed 
to command. 

This grave patriarch was John Pas- 
tern. 

I write his name with respect, even as 
it was reverentially whispered there, till, 
travelling from lip to lip, every one pre- 
sent knew that a great man was amongst 
them. A very quiet, unassuming veteran, 
sitting with his womankind about him — ^ 
his wife and daughter, as I think — self- 
possessed and grave, while men were 
busy with his name in the crowd below, 
and while tens of thousands were staked 
in trusting dependence on his acumen. 
What golden syllables might have fallen 
from those oracular lips, had the veteran 
been so pleased I AVhat hundreds would 
have been freely bidden for a word, a 
look, a nod, a wink, a mere significant 
pursing-up of the lips from that great 
man ! What is the fable of the young 
lady who discoursed pearls and dia- 
monds to a truth such as this ? Pearls 
and diamonds must be of large size 
which would be worth the secrets of 
those Richmond stables, the secrets 
which Mr. Pastern might tell if he 
chose. Perhaps it is the knowledge of 
this which gives him a calm, almost 
clerical, gravity of manner. People come 
to him, and fawn upon him, and tell him 
that such and such a horse from his 
stable has won, or looks safe to win ; 
and he nods pleasantly, thanking them 
for the kind information ; while perhaps 
his thoughts are far awa.y on Epsom 
Downs or Newmarket Flats, winning 
future Derbys and Two Thousands with 
colts that are as yet unfoaled. 

John Mellish is on intimate terms 
with the great man, to whom he pre- 
sents Aurora, and of whom he asks 
advice upon a matter that has been 
troubling him for some time. His train- 
er’s health is failing him, and he wants 
assistance in the stables ; a younger 
man, honest and clever. Does Mr. Pas- 
tern know such a one ? 

The veteran tells him, after due con- 
1 sideration, that he does know of a young 


AURORA FLOYD. 


103 


man ; honest, he believes, as times go, 
who was once employed in the Rich- 
mond stables, and who had written to 
him only a few days before, asking for 
his influence in getting him a situation. 
“ Rut the lad’s name has slipped my 
memory,” added Mr. Pastern ; “ he was 
but a lad when he was with me ; but, 
bless my soul, that’s ten years ago ! I’ll 
look up his letter when I go home, and 
write to you about him. I know he’s 
clever, and I believe he’s honest ; and I 
shall be only too happy,” concluded the 
old gentleman gallantly, “to do any 
thing to oblige Mrs. Mellish.” 


CHAPTER XIY. 

“love took up the glass of time and 

TURNED IT IN HIS GLOWING HANDS.” 

Talbot Bulstrode yielded at last to 
John’s repeated invitations, and con- 
sented to pass a couple of days at Mel- 
lish Park. 

He despised and hated himself for the 
absurd concession. In what a pitiful 
farce had the tragedy ended ! A visitor 
in the house of Ids rival. A calm spec- 
tator of Aurora’s every-day, common- 
place hap{)iness. For the space of two 
days he had consented to occupy this 
most preposterous position. Two days 
only ; then back to the Cornish miners, 
and the desolate bachelor’s lodgings in 
Queen’s Square, Westminster; back to 
his tent in life’s great Sahara. He could 
not for the very sojil of him resist the 
temptation of beholding the inner life 
of that Yorkshire mansion. He wanted 
to know for certain — what was it to him, 
I wonder? — whether she was really 
happy, and had utterly forgotten him. 
They all returned to the Park together, 
Aurora, John, Archibald Floyd, Lucy, 
Talbot Bulstrode, and Captain Hunter. 
The last-named officer was a jovial gen- 
tleman with a hook nose and auburn 
whiskers ; a gentleman whose intellectual 
attainments were of no very oppressive 
order, but a hearty, pleasant guest in an 
honest country mansion, where there is 
cheer and welcome for all. 

Talbot could but inwardly confess that 


Aurora became her new position. How 
every body loved her ! What an atmo- 
sphere of happiness she created about 
her wherever she went 1 How joyously 
the dogs barked and leapt at sight of 
her, straining their chains in the despe- 
rate effort to approach her. How fear- 
lessly the thorough-bred mares and foals 
fan to the paddock-gates to bid her wel- 
come, bending down their velvet nostrils 
to nestle upon her shoulder, or respond 
to the touch of her caressing hand. See- 
ing all this, how could Talbot refrain 
from remembering that this same sun- 
light might have shone upon that dreary 
castle far away by the surging Western 
Sea? She might have been his, this 
beautiful creature ; but at what price ? 
At the price of honor; at the price of 
every princi})le of his mind, which had 
set up for himself a holy and perfect 
standard — a pure and spotless ideal for 
the wife of his choice. Forbid it, man- 
hood I He might have weakly yielded ; 
he might have been happy, with the 
blind happiness of a lotus-eater, but not 
the reasonable bliss of a Christian. 
Thank Heaven for the strength which 
had been given him to escape from the 
silken net ! Thank Heaven for the 
power which had been granted to him 
to fight the battle. 

Standing by Aurora’s side in one of 
the wide windows at Mellish Park, look- 
ing far out over the belted lawn to the 
glades in which the deer lay basking 
drowsily in the April sunlight, he could 
not repress the thought uppermost in 
his mind. 

“ I am — very glad — to see you so 
hajipy, Mrs. Mellish.” 

She looked at him with frank, truth- 
ful eyes, in whose brightness there was 
not one latent shadow. 

“Yes,” she. said, “I am very, very 
happy. My husband is very good to 
me. He loves — and trusts me.” 

She could not resist that one little 
stab — the only vengeance she ever took 
upon him ; but a stroke that pierced him 
to the heart. 

“ Aurora I Aurora ! Aurora !” he 
cried. 

That half-stifled cry revealed the secret 
of wounds that were not yet healed. 
Mrs. Mellish turned pale at the traitor- 
ous sound. This man must be cured. 


AUROEA FLOYD. 


104 

The happy wife, secure in her own strong- 
hold of love and confidence, could not 
bear to see this poor fellow still adrift. 

She by no means despaired of his 
cure, for experience had taught her, that 
although love’s passionate fever takes 
several forms, there are very few of them 
incurable. Had she not passed safely 
through the ordeal herself, without one 
scar to bear witness of the old wounds ? 

She left Captain Bulstrode staring 
moodily out of the window, and went 
away to plan the saving of this poor 
shipwrecked soul. 

She ran in the first place to tell Mr. 
John Mellish of her discovery, as it was 
her custom to carry to him every scrap 
of intelligence, great and small. 

“ My dearest old Jack,” she said — it 
was another of her customs to address 
him by every species of exaggeratedly 
endearing appellation ; it may be that 
she did this for the quieting of her own 
conscience, being well aware that she 
tyrannised over him — “ my darling boy, 
I have made. a discovery.” 

“ About the filly ?” 

“ About Talbot Bulstrode.” 

John’s blue eyes twinkled maliciously. 
He was evidently half-prepared for what 
was coming. 

“ What is it, Lolly ?” 

Lolly was a corruption of Aurora, 
devised by John Mellish. 

“ Why, I’m really afraid, my precious 
darling, that he hasn’t quite got over — ” 

“My taking you away from him!” 
roared John. “I thought as much. 
Poor devil — poor Talbot I I could see 
that he would have liked to fight me on 
the Stand at York. Upon my word, I 
pity him 1” and in token of his compas- 
sion Mr. Mellish burst into that old 
joyous, boisterous, but musical laugh, 
which Talbot might almost have heard 
at the other end of the house. 

This was a favorite delusion of John’s. 
He firmly believed that he had won Au- 
rora’s affection in fair competition with 
Captain Bulstrode ; pleasantly ignoring 
that the captain had resigned all preten- 
sions to Miss Floyd’s hand nine or ten 
months before his own offer had been 
accepted. 

The genial, sanguine creature had a 
habit of deceiving himself in this manner. 
He saw all things in the universe just as 
ne wished to see them, — all men and 


women good and honest ; life one long, 
pleasant voyage in a well-fitted ship, 
with only first-class passengers on board. 
He was one of those men who are likely 
to cut their throats or take prussic acid 
upon the day they first encounter the 
black visage of Care. 

“And what are we to do with this 
poor fellow, Lolly ?” 

“ Marry him I” exclaimed Mrs. Mellish. 

“Both of us?” said John, simply. 

“ My dearest pet, what an obtuse old 
darling you are I Ho ; marry him to 
Lucy Floyd, my first cousin once re- 
moved, and keep the Bulstrode estate in 
the family.” 

“ Marry him to Lucy !” 

“Yes; why not? She has studied 
enough, and learnt history, and geogra- 
phy, and astronomy, and botany, and 
geology, and conchology, and entomo- 
logy enough ; and she has covered I 
don’t know how many China jars with 
impossible birds and flowers ; and she 
has illuminated missals, and read High- 
Church novels. So the next best thing 
she can do is to marry Talbot Bul- 
strode.” 

John had his own reasons for agreeing 
with Aurora in this matter. He remem- 
bered that secret of poor Lucy’s, which 
he had discovered more than a year be- 
fore at Felden Woods : the secret which 
had been revealed to him by some mys- 
terious sympathetic power belonging to 
hopeless love. So Mr. Mellish declared 
his hearty concurrence in Aurora’s 
scheme, and the two amateur match- 
makers set to work to devise a compli- 
cated man-trap, in the which Talbot was 
to be entangled ; never for a moment 
imagining that, while they were racking 
their brains in the endeavor to bring 
this piece of machinery to perfection, 
the intended victim was quietly strolling 
across the sunlit lawn towards the very 
fate they desired for him. 

Yes, Talbot Bulstrode lounged with 
languid step to meet his destiny, in a 
wood upon the borders of the Park ; a 
part of the Park, indeed, inasmuch as it 
was within the boundary-fence of John’s 
domain. The wood-anemones trembled 
in the spring breezes, deep in those sha- 
dowy arcades ; pale primroses showed 
their mild faces amid their sheltering 
leaves ; and in shady nooks, beneath 
low spreading boughs of elm and beech, 


AURORA FLOYD. 


105 


oak and ash, the violets hid their purple 
beauty from the vulgar eye. A lovely 
spot, soothing by its harmonious in- 
fluence ; a very forest sanctuary, without 
whose dim arcades man cast his burden 
down, to enter in a child. Captain Bul- 
strode had felt in no very pleasant 
humor as he walked across the lawn ; 
but some softening influence stole upon 
him on the threshold of that sylvan 
shelter which made him feel a better 
man. He began to question himself as 
to how he was playing his part in the 
great drama of life. 

“ Good Heavens !” he thought, “ what 
a shameful coward, what a negative 
wretch, I have become by this one grief 
of my manhood ! An indifferent son, a 
careless brother, a useless, purposeless 
creature, content to dawdle away my 
life in feeble pottering with political 
economy. Shall I ever be in earnest 
again ? Is this dreary doubt of every 
living creature to go with me to my 
grave ? Less than tw'o years ago my 
heart sickened at the thought that 1 had 
lived to two-and-thirty years of age, and 
had never been loved. Since then — 
since then — since then I have lived 
through life’s brief fever ; I have fought 
manhood’s worst and sharpest battle, 
and find myself — where ? Exactly where 
I was before ; still companionless upon 
the dreary journey ; only a little nearer 
to the end.” 

He walked slowly onward into the 
woodland aisle, other aisles branching 
away from him right and left into deep 
glades and darkening shadow. A month 
or so later, and the mossy ground be*- 
neath his feet would be one purple car- 
pet of hyacinths, the very air thick with 
a fatal scented vapor from the per- 
fumed bulbs. 

“I asked too much,” said Talbot, in 
that voiceless argument we are perpet- 
ually carrying on with ourselves; “I 
asked too much ; I yielded to the spell 
of the siren, and was angry because I 
missed the white wings of the angel. I 
was bewitched by the fascinations of a 
beautiful woman, when I should have 
sought for a noble-minded wife.” 

He went deeper and deeper into the 
wood, going to his fate, as another man 
was to do before the coming summer 
was over ; but to what a different fate I 
The long arcades of beech and elm had 


reminded him from the first of the solemn 
aisles of a cathedral. The saint was 
only needed. And coming suddenly to 
a spot where a new arcade branched off 
abruptly on his right hand, he saw, in 
one of the sylvan niches, as fair a saint 
as had ever been modelled by the hand 
of artist and believer — the same golden- 
haired angel he had seen in the long 
drawing-room at Felden Woods — Lucy 
Floyd, with the pale aureola about her 
head, her large straw hat in her lap 
filled with anemones and violets, and 
the third volume of a novel in her hand. 

How much in life often hangs, or 
seems to us to hang, upon what is called 
by playwrights “a situation !” But for 
this sudden encounter, but for coming 
thus upon this pretty picture, Talbot 
Bulstrode might have dropped into his 
grave ignorant to the last of Lucy’s love 
for him. But, given a sunshiny April 
morning (April’s fairest bloom, remem- 
ber, when the capricious nymph is mend- 
ing her manners, aware that her lovelier 
sister May is at hand, and anxious to 
make a good impression before she drops 
her farewell curtsey, .and weeps her last 
brief shower of farewell tears) — given a 
balmy spring morning, solitude, a wood, 
wild-flowers, golden hair and blue eyes, 
and is the problem difficult to solve? 

Talbot Bulstrode, leaning against the 
broad trunk of a beech, looked down at 
the fair face, which crimsoned under his 
eyes ; and the first glimmering hint of 
Lucy’s secret began to dawn upon him. 
At that moment he had no thought of 
profiting by the discovery, no thought 
of what he was afterwards led on to 
say. His mind was filled with the storm 
of emotion that had burst from him in 
that wild cry to Aurora. Pi,age and 
jealousy, regret, despair, envy, love, 
and hate — all the conflicting feelings 
that had struggled like so many demons 
in his soul at sight of Aurora’s happi- 
ness, were still striving for mastery in 
his breast ; and the first words he spoke 
revealed the thoughts that were upper- 
most. 

“Your cousin is very happy in her 
new life, Miss Floyd ?” he said. 

Lucy looked up at him with surprise. 
It was the first time he had spoken to 
her of Aurora. 

“Yes,” she answered quietly, “I 
think she is happy.” 


106 


AURORA FLOYD. 


Captain Bulstrode whisked the end 
of his cane across a group of anemones, 
and decapitated the tremulous blossoms. 
He was thinking, rather savagely, what 
a shame it was that this glorious Aurora 
could be happy with big, broad-shoul- 
dered, jovial-tempered John Mellish. 
He could not understand the strange 
anomaly; he could not discover the 
clue to the secret ; he could not com- 
prehend that the devoted love of this 
sturdy Yorkshireman was in itself strong 
enough to conquer all difficulties, to 
outweigh all differences. 

Little by little he and Lucy began to 
talk of Aurora, until Miss Floyd told 
her companion all about that dreary 
time at Felden Woods, during which 
the life of the heiress was well-nigh des- 
paired of. So she had loved him truly, 
then, after all ; she had loved, and had 
suffered, and had lived down her trou- 
ble, and had forgotten him, and was 
happy. The story w'as all told in that 
one sentence. He looked blankly back 
at the irrecoverable past, and was angry 
with the pride of the Bulstrodes, which 
had stood between himself and his hap- 
piness. 

He told sympathising Lucy something 
of his sorrow; told her that misappre- 
hension — mistaken pride — had parted 
him from Aurora. She tried, in her 
gentle, innocent fashion, to comfort the 
strong man in his weakness, and in try- 
ing revealed — ah, how simply and trans- 
parently ! — the old secret, which had so 
long been hidden from him. 

Heaven help the man whose heart is 
caught at the rebound by a fair-haired 
divinity, with dove-like eyes, and a low 
tremulous voice softly attuned to his 
grief. Talbot Bulstrode saw that he 
was beloved, and, in very gratitude, 
made a dismal offer of the ashes of that 
fire which had burnt so fiercely at Au- 
rora’s shrine. Do not despise this poor 
Lucy if she accepted her cousin’s for- 
gotten lover with humble thankfulness, 
nay, with a tumult of wild delight, and 
with joyful fear and trembling. She 
loved him so well, and had loved him so 
long. Forgive and pity her, for she 
was one of those pure and innocent 
creatures whose whole being resolves it- 
self into affection: to whom passion, 
anger, and pride are unknown ; who 
live only to love, and who* love until 


death. Talbot Bulstrode told Lucy 
Floyd that he had loved Aurora with 
the whole strength of his soul, but that, 
now the battle was over, he, the stricken 
warrior, needed a consoler for his de- 
clining days : would she, could she, 
give her hand to one who would strive 
to the uttermost to fulfil a husband’s 
duty, and to make her happy ? Happy I 
She would have been happy if he had 
asked her to be his slave ; happy if she 
could have been a scullery-maid at Bul- 
strode Castle, so that she might have 
seen the dark face she loved once or 
twice a day through the obscure panes 
of some kitchen window. 

But she was the most undemonstrative 
of women, and, except by her blushes, 
and her drooping eyelids, and the tear- 
drop trembling upon the soft auburn 
lashes, she made no reply to the cap- 
tain’s appeal, until at last, taking her 
hand in his, he won from her a low-con- 
senting murmur which meant yes. 

Good Heavens! how hard it is upon 
such women as these that they feel so 
much and yet display so little feeling. 
The dark-eyed, impetuous creatures, who 
speak out fearlessly, and tell you that 
they love or hate you, flinging their arms 
round your neck or throwing the carv- 
ing-knife at you, as the case may be, get 
full value for all their emotion ; but 
these gentle creatures love, and make no 
sign. They sit, like Patience on a monu- 
ment, smiling at grief ; and no one reads 
the mournful meaning of that sad smile. 
Concealment, like the worm i’ the bud, 
feeds on their damask cheeks ; and com- 
passionate relatives tell them that they 
are bilious, and recommend Cockle’s 
pills, or some other homely remedy, for 
their pallid complexions. They are al- 
ways at a disadvantage. Their inner 
life may be a tragedy, all blood and tears, 
while their outer existence is some dull 
domestic drama of every-day life. The 
only outward sign Lucy Floyd gave of 
the condition of her heart was that oive 
tremulous, half-whispered affirmative ; 
and yet what a tempest of emotion was 
going forward within I The muslin folds 
of her dress rose and fell with the surg- 
ing billows ; but, for the very life of her, 
she could have uttered no better re- 
sponse to Talbot’s pleading. 

It was only by and by, after she and 
Captain Bulstrode had wandered slowly 


AURORA FLOYD. 


back to the house, that her emotion be- 
trayed itself. Aurora met her cousin in 
the corridor out of which their rooms 
opened, and, drawing Lucy into her 
own dressing-room, asked the truant 
where she had been. 

“ Where have you been, you runaway 
girl ? John and I have wanted you 
half a dozen times.” 

Miss Lucy Floyd explained that she 
had been in the wood with the last new 
novel — a High-Church novel, in which 
the heroine rejected the clerical hero be- 
cause he did not perforin the service ac- 
cording to the Rubric. Now Miss Lucy 
Floyd made this admission with so much 
confusion and so many blushes, that it 
would have appeared as if there were 
some lurking criminality in the fact of 
spending an April morning in a wood ; 
and being further examined as to why 
she had stayed so long, and whether she 
had been alone all the time, poor Lucy 
fell into a pitiful slate of embarrassment, 
saying that she had been alone ; that is 
to say, part of the time — or at least 
most of the time; but that Captain 
Bulstrode — 

But in trying to pronounce his name 
— this beloved, this sacred name — Lucy 
Floyd’s utterance failed her ; she fairly 
broke down, and burst into tears. 

Aurora laid her cousin’s face upon her 
Dreast, and looked down with a womanly, 
matronly glance, into those tearful blue 
eyes. 

Lucy, my darling,” she said, “ is it 
really and truly as I think — as I wish : 
— Talbot loves you ?” 

“He has asked me to marry him,” 
Lucy whispered. 

“ And you — you have consented — you 
love him ?” 

Lucy Floyd only answered by a new 
burst of tears. 

“ Why, my darling, how this surprises 
me ! How long has it been so, Lucy ? 
How long have you loved him ?” 

“From the hour I first saw him,” 
murmured Lucy ; “from the day he first 
came to Felden. 0 Aurora, I know how 
foolish and weak it was ; I hate myself 
for the folly; but he is so good, so 
noble, so — ” 

“ My silly darling ; and because he is 
good and noble, and has asked you to be 
his wife, you shed as many tears as if | 
you had been asked to go to his funeral. 1 


107 

I My loving, tender Lucy, you loved him 
all the time, then ; and you were so 
gentle and good to me — to me, who was 
selfish enough never to guess — My dear- 
est, you are a hundred times better 
suited to him than ev,er I was, and you 
will be as happy — as happy as I am 
with that ridiculous old John.” 

Aurora’s eyes filled with tears as she 
spoke. She was truly and sincerely 
glad that Talbot was in a fair way to 
find consolation, still more glad that her 
sentimental cousin was to be made happy. 

Talbot Bulstrode lingered on a few 
days at Mellish Park ; — happy, ah, too 
happy days for Lucy Floyd ! — and then 
departed, after receiving the congratu- 
lations of John and Aurora. 

He was to go straight to Alexander 
Floyd’s villa at Fulham, and plead his 
cause with Lucy’s father. There was 
little fear of his meeting other than a 
favorable reception ; for Talbot Bul- 
strode, of Bulstrode Castle, was a very 
great match for a daughter of the junior 
branch of Floyd, Floyd, and Floyd, a 
young lady whose expectations were 
considerably qualified by half a dozen 
brothers and sisters. 

So Captain Bulstrode went back to 
London as the betrothed lover of Lucy 
Floyd; went back with a subdued glad- 
ness in his heart, all unlike the stormy 
joys of the past. He was happy in the 
choice he had made, calmly and dispas- 
sionately. He had loved Aurora for 
her beauty and her fascination ; he was 
going to marry Lucy because he had 
seen much of her, had observed her 
closely, and believed her to be all that 
a woman should be. Perhaps, if stern 
truth must be told, Lucy’s chief charm 
in the captain’s eyes lay in that reve- 
rence for himself which she so naively’ 
betrayed. He accepted her worship 
with a quiet, unconscious serenity, and 
thought her the most sensible of women. 

Mrs. Alexander was utterly bewil- 
dered when Aurora’s sometime lover 
pleaded for her daughter’s hand. She 
was too busy a mother amongst her little 
flock to be the most penetrating of ob- 
servers, and she had never suspected the 
state of Lucy’s heart. She w’as glad, 
therefore, to find that her daughter did 
justice to her excellent education, and 
I had too much good sense to refuse so 
1 advantageou's an offer as that of Captain 


108 


AURORA FLOYD. 


Bulstrode ; and she joined with her hus- 
band in perfect approval of Talbot’s 
suit. So, there being no let or hindrance, 
and as the lovers had long known and 
esteemed each other, it was decided, at 
the captain’s reqpest, that the wedding 
should take place early in June, and 
that the honeymoon should be spent at 
Bulstrode Castle. At the end of May 
Mr. and Mrs. Mellish went to Felden, 
on purpose to attend Lucy’s wedding, 
which took place with great style at 
Fulham, Archibald Floyd presenting 
his grandniece with a cheque for five 
thousand pounds after the return from 
church. 

Once during that marriage ceremony 
Talbot Bulstrode was nigh upon rubbing 
his eyes, thinking that the })ageant must 
be a dream A dream surely ; for here 
was a pale, fair-haired girl by his side, 
while the woman he had chosen two 
years before stood amidst a group be- 
hind him, and looked on at the ceremony, 
a pleased spectator. But when he felt 
the little gloved hand trembling upon 
his arm, as the bride and bridegroom 
left the altar, he remembered that it was 
no dream, and that life held new and 
solemn duties for him from that hour. 

Now my two heroines being married, 
the reader versed in the physiology of 
novel writing may conclude that my 
story is done, that the green curtain is 
ready to fall upon the last act of the 
play, and that I have nothing more to 
do than to entreat indulgence for the 
shortcomings of the performance and the 
performers. Yet, after all, does the busi- 
ness of the real life-drama always end 
upon the altar-steps? Must the play 
needs be over when the hero and heroine 
have signed their names in the register? 
Does man cease to be, to do, and to suf- 
fer when he gets married ? And is it 
necessary that ihe novelist, after devoting 
three volumes to the description of a 
courtship of six weeks’ duration, should 
reserve for himself only half a page in 
which to tell us the events of two-thirds 
of a lifetime. Aurora is married, and 
settled, and happy ; sheltered, as one 
would imagine, from all dangers, safe 
under the wing of her stalwart adorer; 
but it does not therefore follow that the 
story of her life is done. She has es- 
caped shipwreck for a while, and has 
safely landed on a pleasant shore ; but 


the storm may still lower darkly upon 
the horizon, while the hoarse thunder 
grumbles threateningly in the distance. 


CHAPTER XY. 

MR. pastern’s letter. 

Mr. John Mellish reserved to him- 
self one room upon the ground-floor of 
his house : a cheerful, airy apartment, 
with French windows opening upon the 
lawn ; windows that were sheltered from 
the sun by a verandah overhung with 
jesftamine and roses. It was altogether 
a pleasant room for the summer season, 
the floor being covered with an India 
matting instead of a carpet, and many 
of the chairs being made of light basket- 
work. Over the chimney-piece hung a 
portrait of John’s father, and opposite 
to this work of art there was the likeness 
of the deceased gentleman’s favorite 
hunter, surmounted by a pair of brightly- 
polished spurs, the glistening rowels of 
which had often pierced the sides of that 
faithful steed. In this chamber Mr. 
Mellish kept his whips, canes, foils, sin- 
gle-sticks, boxing-gloves, spurs, guns, 
pistols, powder and shot flasks, fishing- 
tackle, boots, and tops; and many happy 
mornings were spent by the master of 
Mellish Park in the pleasing occupation 
of polishing, repairing, inspecting, and 
otherwise setting in order, these posses- 
sions. He had as many pairs of hunt- 
ing-boots as would have supplied half 
Leicestershire, with tops to match. He 
had whips enough for half the Melton 
i Hunt. Surrounded by these treasures, 
as it were in a temple sacred to the 
deities of the race-course and the hunt- 
ing-field, Mr. John Mellish used to hold 
solemn audiences with his trainer and 
his head-groom upon the business of the 
stable. 

It was Aurora’s custom to peep into 
this chamber perpetually, very much to 
the delight and distraction of her adoring 
husband, who found the black eyes of his 
divinity a terrible hindrance to business, 
except, indeed, when he could induce 
Mrs. Mellish to join in the discussion 
upon hand, and lend the assistance of 
her powerful intellect to the little con- 


AURORA FLOYD. 


clave. I believe that John thought she 
could have liandicapped the horses for 
the Chester Cup as well as Mr. Topham 
himself. She was such a brilliant crea- 
ture, that every little smattering of 
knowledge she possessed appeared to 
such good account as to make her seem 
an adept in any subject of which she 
spoke, and the simple Yorkshireman be- 
lieved ill her as the wisest as well as the 
noblest and fairest of women. 

Mr. and Mrs. Mellish returned to 
Yorkshire immediately after Lucy’s wed- 
ding. Poor John was uneasy about his 
stables ; for his trainer was a victim to 
chronic rheumatism, and Mr. Pastern 
had not as yet made any communication 
respecting the young man of whom he 
had spoken on the Stand at York. 

“I shall keep Langley,” John said to 
Aurora, speaking of his old trainer; “for 
he’s an honest fellow, and his judgment 
will always be of use to me. He and his 
wife can still occupy the rooms over the 
stables ; and the new man, whoever he 
may be, can live in the lodge on the 
north side of the Park. Nobody ever 
goes in at that gate ; so the lodge-keep- 
er’s post is a sinecure, and the cottage 
has been shut up for the last year or two. 
I wish John Pastern would write.” 

“And I wish whatever you wish, my 
dearest life,” Aurora said dutifully to 
her happy slave. 

Yery little had been seen of Steeve 
Hargraves, the Softy, since the day upon 
which John Mellish had turned him neck 
and crop out of his service. One of the 
grooms had seen him in a little village 
close to the Park, and Stephen had in- 
formed the man that he was getting his 
living by doing odd jobs for the doctor 
of the parish, and looking after that 
gentleman’s horse and gig; but the Softy 
had seemed inclined to be sulky, and had 
said very little about himself or his senti- 
ments. He made very particular in- 
quiries, though, about Mrs. Mellish, and 
asked so many questions as to what 
Aurora did and said, where she went, 
whom she saw, and how she agreed with 
her husband, that at last the groom, 
although only a simple country lad, re- 
fused to answer any more interrogatories 
about his mistress. 

Steeve Hargraves rubbed his coarse, 
sinewy hands, and chuckled as he spoke 
of Aurora. 


109 

“ She’s a rare proud one, — a regular 
high-spirited lady,” he said, in that 
whispering voice that always sounded 
strange. “ She laid in on to me with 
that riding-whip of hers; but I bear 
no malice — I bear no malice. She’s a 
beautiful creature, and I wish Mr. Mel- 
lish joy of his bargain.” 

The groom scarcely knew how to take 
this, not being fully aware if it was in- 
tended as a compliment or an imperti- 
nence. So he nodded to the Softy, and 
strode off, leaving him still rubbing his 
hands and whispering about Aurora 
Mellish, who had long ago forgotten her 
encounter with Mr. Stephen Hargraves. 

How was it likely that she should re- 
member him, or take heed of him ? 
How was it likely that she should take 
alarm because the pale-faced widow, 
Mrs. Walter Powell, sat by her hearth 
and hated her ? Strong in her youth 
and beauty, rich in her happiness, shel- 
tered and defended by her husband’s 
love, how should she think of danger? 
How should she dread misfortune ? She 
thanked God every day that the troubles 
of her youth were past, and that her 
path in life led henceforth through 
smooth and pleasant places, where no 
perils could come. 

Lucy was atBulstrode Castle, winning 
upon the affections of her husband’s mo- 
ther, who patronised her daughter-in-law 
with lofty kindness, and took the blush- 
ing, timorous creature under her shelter- 
ing wing. Lady Bulstrode was very 
well satisfied with her son’s choice. He 
might have done better, certainly, as to 
position and fortune, the lady hinted to 
Talbot; and, in her maternal anxiety, 
she would have preferred his marrying 
any one rather than the cousin of that 
Miss Floyd who ran away from school, 
and caused such a scandal at the Paris- 
ian seminary. But Lady Bulstrode’s 
heart warmed to Lucy, who was so gen- 
tle and humble, and who always spoke 
of Talbot as if he had been a being far 
“too bright and good,” &c., much to 
the gratification of her ladyship’s mater- 
nal vanity. 

“ She has a very proper affection 
for you, Talbot,” Lady Bulstrode said, 
“ and, for so young a creature, promises 
to make an excellent wife ; far better 
suited to you, I’m sure, than her cousin 
could ever have been.” 


no 


AURORA FLOrU. 


Talbot turned fiercely upon his mo- 
ther, very much to the lady’s surprise. 

“Wliy will you be for ever bringing 
Aurora’s name into the question, mo- 
ther ?” he cried. “ Why cannot you let 
her memory rest? You parted us for 
ever, — you and Constance, — and is not 
that enough ? She is married, and she 
and her husband are a very happy 
couple. A man might have a worse 
wife than Mrs. Mellish, T can tell you ; 
and John seems to appreciate her value 
in his rough way.” 

“ You need not be sO violent, Talbot,” 
Lady Bulstrode said, with offended dig- 
nity. “ I am very glad to hear that 
Miss Floyd has altered since her school- 
days, and I hope that she may continue 
to be a good wife,” she added, with an 
emphasis which expressed that she had 
no very great hopes of the continuance 
of Mr. Mellish’s happiness. 

“My poor mother is offended with 
me,” Talbot thought, as Lady Bulstrode 
swept out of the room. “ I know I am 
an abominable bear, and that nobody 
will ever truly love me so long as I live. 
My poor little Lucy loves me after her 
fashion ; loves me in fear and trembling ; 
as if she and belonged to different 
orders of beings ; very much as the fly- 
ing woman must have loved my country- 
man, Peter Wilkins, I think. But, after 
all, perhaps my mother is right, and my 
gentle little wdfe is better suited to me 
than Aurora would have been.” 

So w^e dismiss Talbot Bulstrode for a 
while, moderately happy, and yet not 
quite satisfied. What mortal ever was 
quite satisfied in this world ? It is a 
part of our earthly nature always to find 
something wanting, always to have a 
vague, dull, ignorant yearning which 
cannot be appeased. Sometimes, indeed, 
we are happy ; but in our wildest hap- 
piness we are still unsatisfied, for it 
seems then as if the cup of joy were too 
full, and we grow cold with terror at the 
thought that, even because of its fulness, 
it- may possibly be dashed to the ground. 
What a mistake this life would be, what 
a wild feverish dream, what an unfin- 
ished and imperfect story, if it w'ere not 
a prelude to something better I Taken 
by itself, it is all trouble and confusion ; 
but taking the future as the keynote of 
the present, how wondrously harmonious 
the whole becomes 1 How little does it 


signify that our joys here are not com- 
plete, our wishes not fulfilled, if the com- 
pletion and the fulfilment are to come 
hereafter I 

Little more than a week after Lucy’s 
wedding, Aurora ordered her horse im- 
mediately after breakfast, upon a sunny 
summer morning, and, accompanied by 
the old groom who had ridden behind 
John’s father, went out on an excursion 
amongst the villages round Mellish Park, 
as it was her habit to do once or twice a 
week. 

The poor in the neighborhood of the 
Yorkshire mansion had good reason to 
bless the coming of the banker’s daugh- 
ter. Aurora loved nothing better than 
to ride from cottage to cottage, chatting 
with the simple villagers, and finding 
out their wants. She never found the 
worthy creatures very remiss in stating 
their necessities, and the housekeeper at 
Mellish Park had enough to do in dis- 
tributing Aurora’s bounties amongst the 
cottagers who came to the servants’ hall 
with pencil orders from Mrs. Mellish. 
Mrs. Walter Powell sometimes ventured 
to take Aurora to task on the folly and 
sinfulness of what she called indiscrimi- 
nate almsgiving; but Mrs. Mellish would 
pour such a flood of eloquence upon her 
antagonist, that the ensign’s widow was 
always glad to retire from the unequal 
contest. J^obody had ever been able to 
argue wdth Archibald Floyd’s daughter. 
Impulsive and impetuous, she had al- 
ways taken her own course, wdi ether for 
weal or woe, and nobody had been strong 
enough to hinder her. 

Returning on this lovely June morning 
from one of these charitable expeditions, 
Mrs. Mellish dismounted from her horse 
at a little turnstile leading into the wood, 
and ordered the groom to take the ani- 
mal home. 

“ I have a fancy for walking through 
the wood, Joseph,” she said ; “it’s such 
a lovely morning. Take care of Ma- 
zeppa ; and if you see Mr. Mellish, tell 
him that I shall be home directly.” 

The .man touched his hat, and rode 
off, leading Aurora’s horse. 

Mrs. Mellish gathered up the folds of 
her habit, and strolled slowly into the 
wood, under whose shadow Talbot Bul- 
strode and Lucy had wandered on that 
eventful April day which sealed the 
young lady’s fate. 


AURORA FLOYD. 


Now Aurora had chosen to ramble 
homewards through this wood because, 
being thoroughly happy, the warm glad- 
ness of the summer weather filled her 
with a sense of delight which she was 
loth to curtail. The drowsy hum of the 
insects, the rich coloring of the woods, 
the scent of wild-flowers, the ripple of 
w^ater, — all blended into one delicious 
whole, and made the earth lovely. 

There is something satisfactory, too, 
in the sense of possession ; and Aurora 
felt, as she looked down the long ave- 
nues, and away through distant loop- 
holes in Jhe wood to the wide expanse 
of park and lawn, and the picturesque 
irregular pile of building beyond, half 
Gothic, half Elizabethan, and so lost in 
a rich tangle of ivy and bright foliage 
as to be beautiful at every point, — she 
felt, I say, that all the fair picture was 
her own, or her husband’s, which was the 
same thing. She had never for one mo- 
ment regretted her marriage with John 
Mellish. She had never, as I have said 
already, been inconstant to him by one 
thought. 

In one part of the wood, the ground 
rose considerably ; so that the house, 
which lay low, was distinctly visible 
wdienever there was a break in the trees. 
This rising ground was considered the 
prettiest spot in the wood, and here a 
summer-house had been erected : a fra- 
gile, wooden building, which had fallen 
into decay of late years, but which was 
still a pleasant resting-place upon a sum- 
mer’s day, being furnished with a wooden 
table and a broad bench, and sheltered 
from the sun and wind by the lower 
branches of a magnificent beech. A 
few paces away from this summer-house 
there w'as a pool of water, the surface of 
w'hich was so covered with lilies and 
tangled weeds as to have beguiled a 
short-sighted traveller into forgetfulness 
of the danger beneath. Aurora’s way 
led her past this spot, and she started 
with a momentary sensation of terror on 
seeing a man lying asleep by the side of 
the pool. She quickly recovered herself, 
remembering that John allowed the 
public to use the footpath through the 
wood ; but she started again when the 
man, who must have been a bad sleeper 
to be aroused by her light footstep, 
lifted his head, and displayed the white 
face of the Softy. 


Ill 

He rose slowly from the ground upon 
seeing Mrs. Mellish, and crawled away, 
looking at her as he went, but not 
making any acknowledgment of her 
presence. 

Aurora could not repress a brief ter- 
rified shudder ; it seemed as if her foot- 
fall had startled some viperish creature, 
some loathsome member of the reptile 
race, and scared it from its lurking- 
place. 

Steeve Hargraves disappeared amongst 
the trees as Mrs. Mellish walked on, her 
head proudly erect, but her cheek a shade 
paler than before this unexpected en- 
counter with the Softy. 

Her joyous gladness in the bright 
summer’s day had forsaken her as sud- 
denly as she had met Stephen Hargraves ; 
that brightsmile, which was even brighter 
than the morning sunshine, faded out, 
and left her face unnaturally grave. 

“ Good heavens !” she exclaimed, 
“ how foolish I am I I am actually 
afraid of that man, — afraid of that piti- 
ful coward who could hurt my feeble old 
dog. As if such a creature as that could 
do one any mischief I” 

Of course this was very wisely argued, 
as no coward ever by any chance worked 
any mischief upon this earth since the 
Saxon prince was stabbed in the back 
while drinking at his kinswoman’s gate, 
or since brave King John and his crea- 
ture plotted together what they should 
do with the little boy Arthur. 

Aurora walked slowly across the lawn 
towards that end of the house at which 
the apartment sacred to Mr. Mellish was 
situated. She entered softly at the open 
window, and laid her hand upon John’s 
shoulder, as he sat at a table covered 
with a litter of account-books, racing- 
lists, and disorderly papers. . 

He started at the touch of the familiar 
hand. 

“ My darling, I’m so glad you’ve come 
in. How long you’ve been I” 

She looked at her little jeweled watch. 
Poor John had loaded her with trinkets 
and gewgawff. His chief grief was that 
she was a wealthy heiress, and that he 
could give her nothing but the adoration 
of his simple, honest heart. 

“ Only half-past one, you silly old 
John,” she said. “What made you 
think me late ?” 

“Because I wanted to consult you 


112 


AURORA FLOYD. 


about something, and to tell you some- 
thing. Such good news I” 

“ About what 

“ About the trainer.” 

She shrugged her shoulders, and pursed 
up her red lips with a bewitching little 
gesture of indifference. 

“ Is that all ?” she said. 

“Yes; but ain’t you glad we’ve got 
the man at last — the very man to suit 
us, I think ? Where’s John Pastern’s 
letter ?” 

Mr. Mellish searched amongst the 
litter of papers upon the table, while 
Aurora, leaning against the framework 
of the open window, watched him, and 
laughed at his embarrassment. 

She had recovered her spirits, and 
looked the very picture of careless glad- 
ness as she leaned in one of those grace- 
ful and unstudied attitudes peculiar to 
her, supported by the framework of the 
window, and with the trailing jessamine 
waving round her in the soft summer 
breeze. She lifted her ungloved hand, 
and gathered the roses above her head 
as she talked to her husband. 

“You most disorderly and unraeth- 
odic of men,” she said, laughing ; “ I 
wouldn’t mind betting you won’t find it.” 

I’m afraid that Mr. Mellish muttered 
an oath as he tossed about the hetero- 
geneous mass of papers in his search for 
the missing document. 

“ I had it five minutes before you came 
in, Aurora,” he said, “ and now there’s 
not a sign of it — oh, here it is !” 

Mr. Mellish unfolded the letter, and, 
smoothing it out upon the table before 
him, cleared his throat preparatory to 
reading the epistle. Aurora still leaned 
against the window-frame, half in and 
half out of the room, singing a snatch 
of a popular song, and trying to gather 
an obstinate half-blown rose which grew 
i^rovokingly out of reach. 

“ You’re attending, Aurora ?” 

“ Yes, de'arest and best.” 

“ But do come in. You can’t hear a 
word there.” 

Mrs. Mellish shrugged her shoul- 
ders, as who should say, “I submit to 
the command of a tyrant,” and advanced 
a couple of paces from the window ; then 
looking at John with an enchantingly in- 
solent toss of her head, she folded her 
hands behind her, and told him she 
would “be good.” She was a careless, 


impetuous creature, dreadfully forgetful 
of what Mrs. Walter Powell called her 
“ responsibilities every mortal thing 
by turns, and never any one thing for 
two minutes together ; happy, generous, 
affectionate ; taking life as a glorious 
summer’s holiday, and thanking God for 
the bounty which made it so pleasant to 
her. 

Mr. John Pastern began his letter 
with an apology for having so long de- 
ferred writing. He had lost the address 
of the person he had wished to recom- 
mend, and had waited until the man 
wrote to him. 

“ I think he will suit you very well,” 
the letter went on to say, “as he is well 
up in his business, having had plenty of 
experience, as groom, jockey, and trainer. 
He is only thirty years of age, but met 
with an accident some time since, wdiich 
lamed him for life. He was half killed 
in a steeple-chase in Prussia, and was 
for upwards of a year in a hospital at 
Berlin. His name is James Conyers, 
and he can have a character from — ” 

The letter dropped out of John Mel- 
lish’s hand as he looked up at his wife. 
It was not a scream which she had ut- 
tered. It was a gasping cry, more ter- 
rible to hear than the shrillest scream 
that ever came from the throat of woman 
in all the long history of womanly dis- 
tress. 

“Aurora! Aurora!” 

He looked at her, and his own face 
changed and whitened at the sight of 
hers. So terrible a transformation had 
come over her during the reading of that 
letter, that the shock could scarcely have 
been greater had he looked up and seen 
another person in her place. 

“ It’s wrong ! it’s wrong !” she cried 
hoarsely; “you’ve read the name wrong. 
It can’t be that !” 

“ What name?” 

“What name ?” she echoed fiercely, 

her face flaming up with a wild fury, 

“ that name ! I tell you, it canH be. 
Give me the letter.” 

He obeyed her mechanically, picking 
up the paper and handing it to her, but 
never removing his eyes from her face. 

She snatched it from him ; looked at 
it for a few moments, with her eyes di- 
lated and her lips apart ; then, reeling 
back two or three paces, her knees bent 
under her, she fell heavily to the ground. 


AURORA FLOYD. 


113 


CHAPTER XVI. 

MR. JAMES CONYERS. 

The first week in July brought James 
Conyers, the new trainer, to Mellish 
Park. John had made no particular 
inquiries as to the man’s character of 
any of his former employers, as a word 
from Mr. Pastern was all-sufficient. 

Mr. Mellish had endeavored to dis- 
cover the cause of Aurora’s agitation at 
the reading of Mr. Pastern’s letter. She 
had fallen like a dead creature at his 
feet ; she had been hysterical through- 
out the remainder of the day, and deliri- 
ous in the ensuing night, but she had 
not uttered one word calculated to throw 
any light upon the secret of her strange 
manifestation of emotion. 

Her husband sat by her bedside upon 
the day after that on which she had fal- 
len into the death-like swoon ; watch- 
ing her with a grave, anxious face, and 
earnest eyes that never wandered from 
her own. 

He was suffering very much the same 
agony that Talbot Bulstrode had en- 
dured at Felden on the receipt of his 
mother’s letter. The dark wall was 
slowly rising and separating him from 
the woman he loved. He was now to 
discover the tortures known only to the 
husband whose wife is parted from him 
by that which has more power to sever 
than any width of land or wide extent of 
ocean — a secret. 

He watched the pale face lying on 
the pillow ; the large, black, haggard 
eyes, wide open, and looking blankly 
out at the far-away purple tree-tops in 
the horizon ; but there was no clue to 
the mystery in any line of that beloved 
countenance ; there was little more than 
an expression of weariness, as if the 
soul, looking out of that white face, was 
so utterly enfeebled as to have lost all 
power to feel any thing but a vague 
yearning for rest. 

The wide casement windows were 
open, but the day was hot and oppres- 
sive — oppressively still and sunny ; the 
landscape sweltering under a yellow 
haze, as if the very atmosphere had been 
opaque with melted gold. Even the 
roses in the garden seemed to feel the 
influence of the blazing summer sky, 
dropping their heavy heads like human 
7 


sufferers from headache. The mastiff 
Bow-wow, lying under an acacia upon 
the lawn, was as peevish as any cap- 
tious elderly gentleman, and snapped 
spitefully at a frivolous butterfly that 
wheeled, and spun, and threw summer- 
saults about the dog’s head. Beautiful 
as was this summer’s day, it was one on 
which people are apt to lose their tem- 
pers, and quarrel with each other, by 
reason of the heat ; every man feeling a 
secret conviction that his neighbor is in 
some way to blame for the sultriness of 
the atmosphere, and that it would be 
cooler if he were out of the way. It was 
one of those days on which invalids are 
especially fractious, and hospital-nurses 
murmur at their vocation ; a day on 
which third-class passengers travelling 
long distances by excursion trains are 
savagely clamorous for beer at every 
station, and hate each other for the nar- 
rowness and hardness of the carriage 
seats, and for the inadequate means of 
ventilation provided by the Railway 
Company ; a day on which stern busi- 
ness-men revolt against the ceaseless 
grinding of the wheel, and, suddenly, 
reckless of consequences, rush wildly to 
the Crown and Sceptre, to cool their 
overheated systems with water souchy 
and still hock ; an abnormal day, upon 
which the machinery of every-day 
life gets out of order, and runs riot 
throughout twelve suffocating hours. 

John Mellish, sitting patiently by his 
wife’s side, thought very little of the 
summer weather. I doubt if he knew 
whether the month was January or June. 
For him earth only held one creature, 
and she was ill and in distress — distress 
from which he was powerless to save 
her — distress the very nature of which 
he was ignorant of. 

His voice trembled when he spoke to 
her. 

“ My darling, you have been very ill,” 
he said. 

She looked at him with a smile so un- 
like her own that it was more painful to 
him to see than the loudest agony of 
tears, and stretched out her hand. He 
took the burning hand in his, and held 
it while he talked to her. 

“ Yes, dearest, you have been ill ; but 
Morton says the attack was merely hys- 
terical, and that you will be yourself 
again to-morrow, so there’s no occasion 


114 


AURORA FLOYD. 


for anxiety on that score. What grieves 
me, darling, is to see that there is some- 
thing on your mind ; something which 
has been the real cause of your illness.” 

She turned her face upon the pillow, 
and tried to snatch her hand from his 
in her impatience, but he held it tightly 
in both his own. 

“ Does my speaking of yesterday dis- 
tress you, Aurora?” he asked gravely. 

“ Distress me I Oh, no I” 

“ Then tell me, darling, why the men- 
tion of that man, the trainer’s name, 
had such a terrible effect upon you.” 

“ The doctor told you that the attack 
was hysterical,” she said coldly; “I 
suppose I was hysterical and nervous 
yesterday.” 

“But the name, Aurora, the name. 
This James Conyers, who is he?” He 
felt the hand he held tighten convul- 
sively upon his owm, as he mentioned 
the trainer’s name. 

“ Who is this man ? Tell me, Aurora. 
For God’s sake, tell me the truth.” 

She turned her face towards him once 
more, as he said this : 

“ If you only want the truth from me, 
John, you must ask me nothing. Re- 
member what I said to you at the Cha- 
teau d’Arques. It was a secret that 
parted me from Talbot Bulstrode. You 
trusted me then, John — you must trust 
me to the end ; or if you cannot trust 
mel’ — she stopped suddenly, and the 
tears welled slowly up to her large, 
mournful eyes, as she looked at her hus- 
band. 

“ What, dearest ?” 

“We must part; as Talbot and I 
parted.” 

“Parti” he cried; “my love, my 
love ! Do you think there is any thing 
upon this earth strong enough to part 
us, except death? Do you think that 
any combination of circumstances, how- 
ever strange, however inexplicable, would 
ever cause me to doubt your honor ; 
or to tremble for my own ? Could I be 
here if I doubted you ? could I sit by 
your side, asking you these questions, 
if I feared the issue? Nothing shall 
shake my confidence ; nothing can. But 
luive pity on me ; think how bitter a 
grief it is to sit here, with your hand in 
mine, and to know that there is a secret 
between us. Aurora, tell me — this man. 


this Conyers — what is he, and who is 
he?” 

“ You know that as well as I do. A 
groom once ; afterwards a jockey ; and 
now a trainer.” 

“ But you know him ?” 

“ I have seen him.” 

“ When ?” 

“ Some years ago, when he was in my 
father’s service.” 

John Mellish breathed more freely for 
a moment. The man had been a groom 
at Felden Woods, that was all. This 
accounted for the fact of Aurora’s re- 
cognizing his name, but not for her agi- 
tation. He was no nearer the clue to 
the mystery than before. 

“ James Conyers was in your father’s 
service,” he said thoughtfully; “but 
why should the mention of his name 
yesterday have caused you such emo- 
lion ?” 

“ I cannot tell you.” 

“It is another secret, then, Aurora,” 
he said reproachfully; “or has this man 
any thing to do with the old secret of 
which you told me at the Chateau 
d’Arques ?” 

She did not answer him. 

“ Ah, I see; I understand, Aurora,” 
he added, after a pause. “This man 
was a servant at Felden Woods ; a S]iy, 
perhaps ; and he discovered the secret, 
and traded upon it, as servants often 
have done before. This caused your 
agitation at hearing his name. You 
were afraid that he would come here 
and annoy you, making use of this secret 
to extort money, and keeping you in 
perpetual terror of him. I think I can 
understand it all. I am right ; am I 
not ?” 

Slie looked at him with something of 
the expression of a hunted animal that 
finds itself at bay. 

“Yes, John.” 

“This man — this groom — knows .some- 
thing of — of the secret.” 

“ He does.” 

John Mellish turned away his head, 
and buried his face in his hands. What 
i cruel anguish ! what bitter degradation 1 
This man, a groom, a servant, was in 
the confidence of his wife, and had such 
power to harass and alarm her, that the 
very mention of his name was enough 
to cast her to the earth, as if stricken 


AURORA FLOYD. 


by sudden death. What, in the name ) 
of heaven, could this secret be, which 
was in the keeping of a servant, and yet 
could not be told to him ? lie bit his 
lip till his strong teeth met upon the 
quivering flesh, in the silent agony of 
that thought. What could it be ? He 
had sworn, only a minute before, to 
trust in her blindly to the end ; and yet, 
and yet — His massive frame shook 
from head to heel in that noiseless strug- 
gle ; doubt and despair rose like twin 
demons in his soul ; but he wrestled 
with them and overcame them ; and, 
turning with a white face to his wife, 
said quietly, 

“ I will press these painful questions 
no further, Aurora. I will write to 
Pastern, and tell him that the man will 
not suit us ; and — ” 

He was rising to leave her bedside, 
when she laid her hand upon his arm. 

“ Don’t write to Mr. Pastern, John,” 
she said; “the man will suit you very 
well, I dare say. I had rather he 
came.” 

“ You wish him to come here.” 

“ Yes.” 

“But he will annoy you ; he will try 
to extort money from you.” 

“ He would do that in any case, since 
he is alive. I thought that he was 
dead.” 

“ Then you really wish him to come 
here ?” 

“I do.” 

John Mellish left his wife’s room in- 
expressibly relieved. The secret could 
not be so very terrible after all, since 
she was willing that the man who knew 
it should come to Mellish Park ; where 
there was at least a remote chance of 
his revealing it to her husband. Per- 
haps, after all, this mystery involved 
others rather tlian herself — her father’s 
commercial integrity — her mother? He 
had heard very little of her mother’s 
history ; perhaps she — Pshaw, why 
weary himself with speculative surmises ? 
he had promised to trust her, and the 
hour had come in which he was called 
upon to keep his promise. He wrote 
to Mr. Pastern, accepting his recom- 
mendation of James Conyers, and waited 
rather impatiently to see what kind of 
man the trainer was. 

He received a letter from Conyers, 
very well written and worded, to the i 


115 

! effect that he would arrive at Mellish 
Park upon the 3d of July. 

Aurora had recovered from her brief 
hysterical attack when this letter ar- 
rived ; but as she was still weak and out 
of spirits, her medical man recommended 
change of air ; so Mr. and Mrs. Mellish 
drove off to Harrogate upon the ‘28th 
of June, leaving Mrs. Powell behind 
them at the Park. 

The ensign’s widow had been scrupu- 
lously kept out of Aurora’s room during 
her short illness ; being held at bay by 
John, who coolly shut the door in the 
lady’s sympathetic face, telling her that 
he’d wait upon his wife himself, and that 
when he wanted female assistance he 
would ring for Mrs. Mellish’s maid. 

Now Mrs. Walter . Powell, being af- 
flicted with that ravenous curiosity com- 
mon to people who live in other people’s 
houses, felt herself deeply injured by this 
line of conduct. There were mysteries 
and secrets afloat, and she was not to be 
allowed to discover them ; there was a 
skeleton in the house, and she was not 
to anatomize the bony horror. She 
scented trouble and sorrow as carnivo- 
rous animals scent their prey ; and yet 
she who hated Aurora was not to be 
allowed to riot at the unnatural feast. 

Why is it that the dependents in a 
household are so feverishly inquisitive 
about the doings and sayings, th6 man- 
ners and customs, the joys and sorrows, 
of those who employ them ? Is it that, 
having abnegated for themselves all ac- 
tive share in life, they take an unhealthy 
interest in those who are in the thick of 
the strife ? Is it because, being cut off 
in a great measure by the nature of their 
employment from family ties and family 
pleasures, they feel a malicious delight 
in all family trials and vexations, and 
the ever-recurring breezes which disturb 
the domestic atmosphere. Remember 
this, husbands and wives, fathers and 
sons, mothers and daughters, brothers 
and sisters, when you quarrel. Your 
servants enjoy the fun. Surely that 
recollection ought to be enough to keep 
you for ever peaceful and friendly. Your 
servants listen at your doors, and repeat 
your spiteful speeches in the kitchen, and 
watch you while they wait at table, and 
understand every sarcasm, every inuendo, 
every look, as well as those at whom the 
cruel glances and the stinging words are 


116 


AURORA FLOYD. 


aimed. They understand your sulky si- 
lence, your studied and over-acted po- 
liteness. The most polished form your 
hate and anger can take is as transpa- 
rent to those household spies as if you 
threw knives at each other, or pelted 
your enemy with the side-dishes and 
vegetables, after the fashion of dispu- 
tants in a pantomime. Nothing that is 
done in the parlor is lost upon these 
quiet, well-behaved watchers from the 
kitchen. They laugh at you; nay worse, 
they pity you. They discuss your affairs, 
and’ make out your income, and settle 
what you can afford to do and what you 
can’t afford to do ; they prearrange the 
disposal of your wife’s fortune, and look 
prophetically forward to the day when 
you will avail yourself of the advantages 
of the new Bankruptcy Act. They 
know why you live on bad terms with 
your eldest daughter, and why your fa- 
vorite son was turned out of doors ; and 
they take a morbid interest in every dis- 
mal secret of your life. You don’t allow 
them followers ; you look blacker than 
thunder if you see Mary’s sister or John’s 
poor old mother sitting meekly in your 
hall ; you are surprised if the postman 
brings them letters, and attribute the 
fact to the pernicious system of over- 
educating the masses ; you shut them 
from their homes and their kindred, 
their lovers and their friends ; you deny 
them books, you grudge them a peep at 
your newspaper ; and then you lift up 
your eyes and wonder at them because 
they are inquisitive, and because the 
staple of their talk is scandal and gossip. 

Mrs. Walter Powell, having been 
treated by most of her employers as a 
species of upper servant, had acquired 
all the instincts of a servant ; and she 
determined to leave no means untried in 
order to discover the cause of Aurora’s 
illness, which the doctor had darkly 
hinted to her had more to do with the 
mind than the body. John Mellish had 
ordered a carpenter to repair the lodge 
at , the north gate, for the accommoda- 
tion of James Conyers; and John’s old 
trainer, Langley, was to receive his col- 
league and introduce him to the stables. 

The new trainer made his appearance 
at the lodge-gates in the glowing July 
sunset; he was accompanied by no less 
a person than Steeve Hargraves, tlie 
Softy, who had been lurking about the 


station upon the look out for a job, and 
who had been engaged by Mr. Conyers 
to carry his portmanteau. 

To the surprise of the trainer, Stephen 
Hargraves sat down his burden at the 
park gates. 

“ You’ll have to find some one else to 
carry it th’ rest of ’t’ ro-ad,” he said, 
touching his greasy cap, and extending 
his broad palm to receive the expected 
payment. 

Mr. James Conyers was rather a 
dashing fellow, with no small amount of 
that quality which is generally termed 
“swagger,” so he turned sharply round 
upon the Softy and asked him what the 
devil he meant. 

“ I mean that I mayn’t go inside yon 
gates,” muttered Stephen Hargraves ; 
“ I mean that I’ve been turned out of 
yon place that I’ve lived in, man and 
boy, for forty year, — turned out like a 
dog, neck and crop.” 

Mr. Conyers threw away the stump 
of his cigar and stared superciliously at 
the Softy. 

“ What does the man mean ?” he 
asked of the woman who had opened 
the gates. 

“ Why, poor fellow, he’s a bit fond, 
sir, and him and Mrs. Mellish didn’t get 
on very well : she has a rare spirit, and 
I have heard that she horsewhipped him 
for beating her favorite dog. Any ways, 
master turned him out of his service.” 

“ Because my lady had horsewhipped 
him. Servants’-hall justice all the world 
over,” said the trainer, laughing, and 
lighting a second cigar from a metal 
fusee-box in his waistcoat-pocket. 

“Yes, that’s justice, aint it?”* the 
Softy said eagerly. “ You wouldn’t like 
to be turned out of a place as you’d 
lived in forty year, would you ? But 
Mrs. Mellish has a rare spirit, bless her 
pretty face !” 

The blessing enunciated by Mr. Ste- 
phen Hargraves had such a very omi- 
nous sound, that the new trainer, who 
was evidently a shrewd, observant fellow, 
took his' cigar from his mouth on pur- 
pose to stare at him. The white f^ace, 
lighted up by a pair of red eyes with a 
dim glimmer in them, was by no means 
the most agreeable of countenances; but 
Mr. Conyers looked at the man for some 
moments, holding him by the collar of 
his coat ill order to do so with more de- 


AURORA FLOYD. 


liberation : then pushing the Softy away 
with an affably contemptuous gesture, he 
said, laughing, 

“ You are a character, my friend, it 
strikes me ; and not too safe a character 
either. I’m dashed if I should like to 
offend you. There’s a shilling for your 
trouble, my man,” he added, tossing the 
money into Steeve’s extended palm with 
careless dexterity. 

“1 suppose I can leave my portman- 
teau here till to-morrow, ma’am ?” he 
said, turning to the woman at the lodge. 
'•I’d carry it down to the house myself 
if I wasn’t lame.” 

He was such a handsome fellow, and 
had such an easy, careless manner, that 
the simple Yorkshire woman was quite 
subdued by his fascinations. 

"Leave it here, sir, and welcome,” she 
said, curtseying, " and my master shall 
take it to the house for you as soon as 
he comes in. Begging your pardon, sir, 
but I suppose you’re the new gentleman 
that’s expected in the stables ?” 

" Precisely.” 

“ Then I was to tell you, sir, that 
they’ve fitted up the north lodge for you ; 
but you was to please go straight to the 
house, and the housekeeper was to make 
you comfortable and give you a bed for 
to-night.” 

Mr. Conyers nodded, thanked her, 
wished her good night, and limped 
slowly away, through the shadows of 
the evening, and under the shelter of the 
over-arching trees. He stepped aside 
from the broad carriage-drive on to the 
dewy turf that bordered it, choosing the 
softest, mossiest places with a sybarite’s 
instinct. Look at him as he takes his 
slow way under those glorious branches, 
in the holy stillness of the summer sun- 
set, his face sometimes lighted by the 
low, lessening rays, sometimes dark with 
the shadows from the leaves above his 
head. He is wonderfully handsome — 
wonderfully and perfectly handsome — 
the very perfection of physical beauty ; 
faultless in proportion, as if each line in 
his face and form had been measured by 
the sculptor’s rule, and carved by the 
sculptor’s chisel. He is a man about 
whose beauty there can be no dispute, 
whose perfection servant-maids and 
duchesses must alike confess — albeit 
they are not bound to admire ; yet it is 
rather a sensual type of beauty, this j 


117 

splendor of form and color, unallied to 
any special charm of expression. Look 
at him now, as he stops to rest, leaning 
against the trunk of a tree, and smoking 
his big cigar with easy enjoyment. He is 
thinking. His dark blue eyes, deeper in 
color by reason of the thick black lashes, 
which fringe them, are half closed, and 
have a dreamy, semi-sentimental expres- 
sion, which might lead you to suppose 
the man was musing upon the beauty 
of the summer sunset. He is thinking 
of his losses on the Chester Cup, the 
wages he is to get from John Mellish, 
and the perquisites likely to appertain 
to the situation. You give him credit for 
thoughts to match with his dark, violet- 
hued eyes, and the exquisite modelling 
of his mouth and chin ; you give him a 
mind as aesthetically perfect as his face 
and figure, and you recoil on discover- 
ing what a vulgar every-day sword may 
lurk under that beautiful scabbard. Mr. 
^James Conyers is, perhaps, no worse 
than other men of his station ; but he is 
decidedly no better. He is only very 
much handsomer; and you have no right 
to be angry with him because his opin- 
ions and sentiments are exactly what 
they would have been if he had had red 
hair and a pug nose. With what won- 
derful wisdom has George Eliot told us 
that people are not any better because 
they have long eyelashes I Yet it must 
be that there is something anomalous in 
this outward beauty and inward ugliness ; 
for, in spite of all experience, we revolt 
against it, and are incredulous to the 
last, believing that the palace which is 
outwardly so splendid can scarcely be 
ill furnished within. Heaven help the 
woman who sells her heart for a hand- 
some face, and awakes, when the bargain 
has been struck, to discover the foolish- 
ness of such an exchange. 

It took Mr. Conyers a long while to 
walk from the lodge to the house. I do 
not know how, technically, to describe 
his lameness. He had fallen, vvith his 
horse, in the Prussian steeple-chase, 
which had so nearly cost him his life, 
and his left leg had been terribly injured. 
The bones had been set by wonderful 
German surgeons, who put the shattered 
leg together as if it had been a Chinese 
puzzle, but who, with all their skill, 
could not prevent the contraction of the 
sinews, which had left the jockey lamed 


118 


AURORA FLOYD. 


for life, and no longer fit to ride in any 
race whatever. He was of the middle 
height, and weighed something over 
eleven stone, and had never ridden ex- 
cept in Continental steeple-chases. 

Mr. James Conyers paused a few pa- 
ces from the house, and gravely contem- 
plated the irregular pile of buildings 
before him. 

“A snug crib,” he muttered ; "plenty 
of tin hereabouts, I should think, from 
the look of the place.” 

Being ignorant of the geography of 
the neighborhood, and being, moreover, 
by no means afflicted by an excess of 
modesty, Mr. Conyers went straight to 
the principal door, ana rang the bell 
sacred to visitors and the family. 

He was admitted by a grave old man- 
servant, who, after deliberately inspecting 
his brown shooting-coat, colored shirt- 
front, and felt hat, asked him, with con- 
siderable asperity, w’hat he w’as pleased 
to want. 

Mr. Conyers explained that he was 
the new trainer, and that he wished to 
see the housekeeper ; but he had hardly 
finished doing so, when a door in an 
angle of the hall was softly opened, and 
Mrs. Walter Powell peeped out of the 
snug little apartment sacred to her hours 
of privacy. 

" Perhaps the young man will be so 
good as to step in here,” she said, ad- 
dressing herself apparently to space, but 
indirectly to James Conyers. 

The young man took off his hat, un- 
covering a mass of luxuriant brown curls, 
and limped across the hall in obedience 
to Mrs. Powell’s invitation. 

" I dare say I shall be able to give 
you any information you require.” 

James Conyerfe smiled, wondering 
whether the bilious-looking party, as he 
mentally designated Mrs. Powell, could 
give him any information about the 
York summer meeting; but he bowed 
politely, and said he merely wanted to 
know where he wms to hang out — he 
stopped and apologized — where he was 
to sleep that night, and whether there 
were any letters for him. But Mrs. 
Powell was by no means inclined to let 
him off so cheaply. She set to work to 
pump him, and labored so assiduously 
that she soon exhausted that very small 
amount of intelligence which he was dis- 
posed to afford her, being perfectly, aware 


of the process to which he was sub- 
jected, and more than equal to the lady 
in dexterity. The ensign’s widow, there- 
fore, ascertained little more than that 
Mr. Conyers was a perfect stranger to 
John Mellish and his wife, neither of 
whom he had ever seen. 

Having failed to gain much by this 
interview, Mrs. Powell was anxious to 
bring it to a speedy termination. 

" Perhaps you would like a glass of 
wine after your walk ?” she said ; " I’ll 
ring for some, and I can inquire at the 
same time about your letters. I dare 
say you are anxious to hear from the re- 
latives you have left at home.” 

Mr. Conyers smiled for the second 
time. He had neither had a home nor 
any relatives to speak of, since the most 
infantine period of his existence ; but 
had been thrown upon the world a sharp- 
witted adventurer at seven or eight years 
old. The " relatives” for whose commu- 
nication he was looking out so eagerly 
*were members of the humbler class of 
bookmen with whom he did business. 

The servant despatched by Mrs. Pow- 
ell returned with a decanter of sherry 
and about half-a-dozen letters for Mr. 
Conyers. 

" You’d better bring the lamp, Wil- 
liam,” said Mrs. Powell, as the man left 
the room ; " for I’m sure you’ll never be 
able to read your letters by this light,” 
she added politely to Mr. Conyers. 

The fact was, that Mrs. Powell, afflict- 
ed by that diseased curiosity of which I 
have spoken, wanted to know' what kind 
of correspondents these were whose let- 
ters the trainer was so anxious to re- 
ceive, and sent for the lamp in order that 
she might get the full benefit of any 
scraps of information to be got at by 
rapid glances and dexterously stolen 
peeps. 

The servant brought a brilliant cam- 
phine-lamp, and Mr. Conyers, not at all 
abashed by Mrs. Powell’s condescension, 
drew his chair close to the table, and 
after tossing off a glass of sherry, settled 
himself tb the perusal of his letters. 

The ensign’s widow, with some needle- 
work in her hand, sat directly opposite 
to him at the small round table, with 
nothing but the pedestal of the lamp be- 
tween them. 

James Conyers took up the first let- 
ter, examined the superscription and 


AURORA FLOYD. 


119 


Beal, tore open the envelope, read the 
brief communication upon half a sheet 
of note-paper, and thrust it into his 
waistcoat-pocket. Mrs. Powell, using 
her eyes to the utmost, saw nothing but 
a few lines in a scratchy plebeian hand- 
writing, and a signature which, seen at 
a disadvantage upside-down, didn’t look 
unlike “ Johnson.” The second envelope 
eontained only a tissue-paper betting- 
list ; the third held a dirty scrap of pa- 
per with a few words scrawled in pencil ; 
but at sight of the uppermost envelope 
of the remaining three Mr. James Con- 
yers started as if he had been shot. Mrs. 
Powell looked from the face of the 
trainer to the superscription of the letter, 
and was scarcely less surprised than Mr. 
Conyers. The superscription was in the 
handwriting of Aurora Mellish. 

It was a peculiar hand ; a hand about 
which there could be no mistake ; not 
an elegant Italian hand, sloping, slender, 
and feminine, but large and bold, with 
ponderous up-strokes and down-strokes, 
easy to recognize at a greater distance 
than that which separated Mrs. Powell 
from the trainer. There was no room 
for any doubt. Mrs. Mellish had writ- 
ten to her husband’s servant, and the 
man was evidently, familiar with her 
band, yet surprised at receiving her let- 
ter. 

He tore open the envelope, and read 
the contents eagerly twice over, frowning 
darkly as he read. 

Mrs. Powell suddenly remembered 
that she had left part of her needlework 
upon a cheffonier behind the young 
man’s chair, and rose quietly to fetch it. 
He was so much engrossed by the letter 
in his hand that he was not aware of the 
pale face which peered for one brief mo- 
ment over his slioulder, and the faded, 
hungry eyes stole a glance at the writing 
on the i)age. 

The letter was written on the first side 
of a sheet of note-paper, with only a few 
words carried over on the second page. 
It was the second page which Mrs. Po- 
well saw. The words written at the top 
of the leaf were these, — “Above all, 
express no surprise. A.” 

There was no ordinary conclusion to 
the letter ; no other signature than this 
big capital A. 


CHAPTER XYII. 

THE trainer’s MESSENGER. 

Mr. James Conyers made himself 
very much at home at Mellish Park. 
Poor Langley, the invalid trainer, who 
was a Yorkshireman, felt himself almost 
bewildered by the easy insolence of the 
town-bred trainer. He looked so much 
too handsome and dashing for his olBce, 
that the grooms and stable-boys bowed 
down to him, and paid court to him as 
they had never done to simple Langley, 
who had been very often obliged to en- 
force his commands with a horsewhip or 
a serviceable leather strap. James Con- 
yer’s handsome face was a capital with 
which that gentleman knew very well 
how to trade, and he took the full 
amount of interest that was to be got for 
it without compunction. I am sorry to 
be obliged to confess that this man, who 
had sat in the artists’ studios and the 
life academies for Apollo and Antinous 
was selfish to the backbone ; and so 
long as he was well fed and clothed and 
housed and provided for, cared very lit- 
tle whence the food and clothing came, 
or who kept the house that sheltered 
him, or filled the purse which he jingled 
in his trousers'pocket. Heaven forbid 
that I should be called upon for his bi- 
ography. I only know that he sprang 
from the mire of the streets, like some 
male Aphrodite rising from the mud : 
that he was a blackleg in the gutter at 
four years of age, and a welsher in the 
matter of marbles and hardbake before 
his fifth birthday. Even then he was 
for ever reaping the advantage of a 
handsome face ; for tender-hearted ma- 
trons, who would have been deaf to the 
cries of a snub-nosed urchin, petted and 
compassionated the pretty boy. 

In his earliest childhood he learned 
therefore to trade upon his beauty, and 
to get the most that he could for that 
merchandise ; and he grew up utterly 
unprincipled, and carried his handsome 
face out into the world to help him on 
to fortune. He was extravagant, lazy, 
luxurious, and selfish ; but he had that 
easy indifferent grace of manner which 
passes with shallow observers for good 
nature. He would not have gone three 
paces out of his way to serve his best 
friend j but he smiled and showed his 


120 ' 


A U R 0 E A FLOYD. 


handsome white teeth with equal liber- 
ality to all his acquaintance ; and took 
credit for being a frank, generous-hearted 
fellow on the strength of that smile. He 
was skilled in the uses of that gilt gin- 
gerbread of generosity which so often 
passes current for sterling gold. He 
was dexterous in the handling of those 
cogged dice which have all the rattle of 
the honest ivories. A slap on the back, 
a hearty shake of the hand, often went 
as far from him as the loan of a sover- 
eign from another man ; and Jim Con- 
yers was firmly believed in by the doubt- 
ful gentlemen with whom he associated, 
as a good-natured fellow who was no- 
body’s enemy but his own. He had that 
superficial Cockney cleverness which is 
generally called knowledge of the world, 
— knowledge of the worst side of the 
world, — and utter ignorance of all that 
is noble upon earth, it might perhaps be 
more justly called ; he had matriculated 
in the streets of London, and graduated 
on the race-course ; he had never read 
any higher literature than the Sunday 
papers and the Racing Calendar, but he 
contrived to make a very little learning 
go a long way, and was generally spoken 
of by his employers as a superior young 
man, considerably above his station. 

Mr. Conyers expressed himself very 
well contented with the rustic lodge 
which had been chosen for his dwelling- 
house. He condescendingly looked on 
while the stable-lads carried the furni- 
ture, selected for him by the housekeeper 
from the spare servants’ rooms, from the 
liouse to the lodge, and assisted in the 
arrangement of the tiny rustic chambers, 
limping about in his shirt-sleeves, and 
showing himself wonderfully handy with 
a hammer and a pocket full of nails. He 
sat upon a table and drank beer with 
such charming affability, that the stable- 
lads were as grateful to him as if he had 
treated them to that beverage. Indeed, 
seeing the frank cordiality with which 
James Conyers smote the lads upon the 
back, and prayed them to be active with 
the can, it was almost difficult to remem- 
ber that he was not the giver of the feast, 
and that it was Mr. John Mellish who 
would have to pay the brewer’s bill. | 
What, amongst all the virtues which 
adorn this earth, can be more charming | 
than the generosity of upper servants 1 , 
With what hearty hospitality they pass 1 


the bottle ! how liberally they throw the 
seven-shilling gunpowder into the tea- 
pot ! how unsparingly they spread the 
twenty-penny fresh butter on the toast I 
and what a glorious welcome they give 
to the droppers-in of the servants’ hall I 
It is scarcely wonderful that the reci- 
pients of their bounty forget that it is 
the master of the household who will be 
called upon for the expenses of the ban- 
quet, and who will look ruefully at the 
total of the quarter’s housekeeping. 

It was not to be supposed that so 
dashing a fellow as Mr. James Conyers 
could, in the lodginghouse-keepers’ pa- 
tois, “do for” himself. He required a 
humble drudge to black his boots, make 
his bed, boil his kettle, cook his dinner, 
and keep the two little chambers at the 
lodge in decent order. Casting about in 
a reflective mood for a fitting person for 
this office, his recreant fancy hit upon 
Steeve Hargraves the Softy. He was 
sitting upon the sill of an open window 
in the little parlor of the lodge, smoking 
a cigar and drinking out of a can of beer, 
when this idea came into his head. He 
was so tickled by the notion, that he took 
his cigar from his mouth in order to laugh 
at his ease. 

“ The man’s a character,” he said, still 
laughing, “ and I’ll have him to wait upon 
me. He’s been forbid the place, has he ? 
Turned out neck and crop because ray 
Lady Highropes horsewhipped him 
Never mind that; Fll give him leave to 
come back, if it’s only for the fun of the 
thing.” 

He limped out upon the high-road 
half an hour after this, and went into 
the village to find Steeve Hargraves. 
He had little difficulty in doing this, as 
every body knew the Softy, and a chorus 
of boys volunteered to fetch him from 
the house of the doctor, in whose service 
he did odd jobs, and brought him to Mr. 
Conyers five minutes afterwards, looking 
very hot and dirty, but as pale of com- 
plexion as usual. 

Stephen Hargraves agreed very readily 
to abandon his present occp -ation and 
to wait upon the trainer, in consideration 
of five shillings a week and his board 
and lodging; but his countenance fell 
when he discovered that Mr. Conyers 
\yas in the service of John Mellish and 
lived on the outskirts of the park. 

“You’re afraid of setting foot upon 


AURORA FLOYD. 


his estate, are you ?” said the trainer, 
laughing. “ Never mind, Steeve ; I give 
you leave to come, and I should like to 
see the man or woman in that house 
who’ll interfere with any whim of mine. 
1 give you leave. You understand.” 

The Softy touched his cap and tried 
to look as if he understood ; but it was 
very evident that he did not understand, 
and it was some time before Mr. Con- 
yers could persuade him that his life 
would be safe within the gates of Hel- 
lish Park ; but he was ultimately induced 
to trust himself at the north lodge, and 
promised to present himself there in the 
course of the evening. 

Now Mr. James Conyers had exerted 
himself as much in order to overcome 
the cowardly objections of this rustic 
clown as he could have done if Steeve 
Hargraves had been the most accom- 
plished body servant in the three ridings. 
Perhaps there was some deeper motive 
than any regard for the man himself in 
this special preference for the Softy ; 
some lurking malice, sorne petty spite, 
the key to which was hidden in his own 
breast. If, while standing smoking in 
the village street, chaffing the Softy for 
the edification of the lookers-on, and 
taking so much trouble to secure such 
an ignorant and brutish esquire, — if one 
shadow of the future, so very near at 
hand, could have fallen across his path, 
surely he would have instinctively recoiled 
from the striking of that ill-omened bar- 
gain. 

But James Conyers had no supersti- 
tion ; indeed, he was so pleasantly free 
from that weakness as to be a disbeliever 
in all things in heaven and on earth, ex- 
cept himself and his own merits; so he 
hired the Softy, for the fun of the thing, 
as he called it, and walked slowly back 
to the park gates to watch for the return 
of Mr. and Mrs. Hellish, who were ex- 
pected that afternoon. 

The woman at the lodge brought him 
outtt chair, and begged him to rest him- 
self under the portico. He tlnmkcd her 
with a pleasant smile, and sat down 
amongst the roses and honeysuckles, and 
lighted another cigar. 

“You’ll find the north lodge dull, I’m 
thinking, sir,” the woman said, fiann the 
open window, where she had reseated 
herself with her needlework. 


121 

“Well, it isn’t very lively, ma’am, cer- 
tainly,” answered Mr. Conyers, “ but it 
serves my purpose well enough. The 
place is lonely enough for a man to be 
murdered there and nobody be any the 
wiser ; but as I have nothing to lose, it 
will answer well enough for me.” 

He might perhaps have said a good 
deal more about the place, but at this 
moment the sound of wheels upon the 
high-road announced the return of the 
travellers, and two or three minutes 
afterwards the carriage dashed through 
the gate, and past Mr. James Conyers. 

Whatever power this man might have 
over Aurora, whatever knowledge of a 
compromising secret he might have ob- 
tained, and traded upon, the fearlessness 
of her nature showed itself now as al- 
ways, and she never flinched at the sight 
of him. If he had placed himself in her 
way on purpose to watch the effect of 
his presence, he must have been disap- 
pointed ; for except that a cold shadow 
of disdain passed over her face as the 
carriage drove by him, he might have 
imagined himself unseen. She looked 
pale and careworn, and her eyes seemed 
to have grown larger since her illness ; 
but she held her head as erect as ever, 
and had still the air of imperial grandeur 
which constituted one of her chief 
churms. 

“ So that is Mr. Hellish,” said Con- 
yers, as the carriage disappeared. “ He 
seems very fond of his wife.” 

“ Yes, sure ; and he is too. Fond of 
her! Why they say there isn’t another 
such couple in all Yorkshire. And she’s 
fond of him too, bless her handsome 
face ! But who wouldn’t be fond of 
Master John ?” 

Mr. Conyers shrugged his shoulders ; 
these patriarchal habits and domestic 
virtues had no particular charm for him. 

“ She had plenty of money, hadn’t 
she ?” he asked, by way of bringing the 
conversation into a more rational chan- 
nel. 

“Plenty of money I I should think so. 
They say her pa gave her fifty thousand 
pounds down on her wedding-day ; not 
that our master wants money, he’s got 
enough and to spare.” 

“Ah, to be sure,” answered Mr. Con- 
yers ; “ that’s always the way of it. The 
banker gave her flfty thousand, did he ? 


122 


AURORA FLOYD. 


If Miss Floyd had married a poor devil, 
now, I don’t suppose her fatlier would 
have p^iven her fifty sixpences.” 

“Well, no; if she’d gone against his 
wishes, I don’t suppose he would. He 
was here in the spring — a nice, white- 
haired old gentleman ; but failing fast.” 

“ Failing fast. And Mrs. Mellish will 
come into a quarter of a million at his 
death, I suppose. Good afternoon, 
ma’am. It’s a queer world.” Mr. Con- 
yers took up his stick, and limped away 
under the trees, repeating this ejacula- 
tion as he went. It was a habit with 
this gentleman to attribute the good for- 
tune of other people to some eccentricity 
in the machinery of life, by which he, 
the only really deserving person in the 
world, had been deprived of his natural 
rights. He went through the wood into 
a meadow where some of the horses un- 
der his charge were at grass, and spent 
upwards of an hour lounging about the 
liedgerows, sitting on gates, smoking his 
pipe, and staring, at the animals, which 
seemed about the hardest work he had 
to do in his capacity of trainer. “It 
isn’t a very hard life, when all’s said and 
done,” he thought, as he looked at a 
group of mares and foals who in their 
eccentric diversions were performing a 
species of Sir Roger de Coverley up and 
down the meadow. “ Jt isn’t a very hard 
life ; for as long as a fellow swears hard 
and fast at the lads, and gets rid of 
plenty of oats, he’s right enough. These 
country gentlemen always judge a man’s 
merits by the quantity of corn they have 
to pay for. Feed their horses as fat as 
pigs, and never enter ’em except among 
such a set of screws as an active j)ig 
could beat ; and they’ll swear by you. 
They’d think more of having a horse 
win the Margate plate, or the Hamp- 
stead Heath sweepstakes, than if he ran 
a good fourth in the Derby. Bless their 
innocent hearts! I should think fellows 
with plenty of money and no brains 
must have been invented for the good 
of fellows with plenty of brains and no 
money ; and that’s how we contrive to 
keep our equilibrium in the universal 
see-saw.” 

Mr. James Conyers, puffing lazy clouds 
of transparent blue smoke from his lips, 
and pondering thus, looked as senti- 
mental as if he had been ruminating 
upon the last three pages of the Bride 


( of Abydos, or the death of Paul Dom- 
bey. He had that romantic style of 
beauty peculiar to dark-blue eyes and 
long black lashes; and he could not 
wonder what he should have for dinner 
without a dreamy pensiveness in the })ur- 
ple shadows of those deep-blue orbs. 
He had found the sentimentality of his 
beauty almost of greater use to him than 
the beauty itself. It was this senti- 
mentality which always put him at an 
advantage with his employers. He 
looked like an exiled prince doing me- 
nial service in bitterness of spirit and a 
turned-down collar. He looked like 
Lara returned to his own domains to 
train the horses of a usurper. He 
looked, in short, like any thing but what 
he was- — a selfish, good-for-nothing, lazy 
scoundrel, who was well up in the use- 
ful art of doing the minimum of work, 
and getting the maximum of wages. 

He strolled slowly back to his rustic 
habitation, where he found the Softy 
waiting for him ; the kettle boiling upon 
a handful of bright fire, and some tea- 
things laid out upon the little round 
table. Mr. Conyers looked rather con- 
temptuoiisly at the humble preparations. 

“ I’ve mashed the tea for ’ee,” said 
the Softy ; “ I thought you’d like a 
coop.” 

The trainer shrugged his shoulders. 

“I can’t say I’m particularly attached 
to the cat-lap,” he said, laughing ; 
“I’ve had rather too much of it when 
I’ve been in training — half-and-half, 
warm tea, and cold-drawn castor-oil. 
I’ll send you into Doncaster for some 
spirits to-morrow, my man ; or to-night, 
perhai)s,” he added reflectively, resting 
his elbow upon the table and" his chin 
in the hollow of his hand. 

He sat for some time in this thought- 
ful attitude, his retainer Sleeve Har- 
graves watching him intently all the 
while, with that half-wondering, half- 
admiring stare with which a very ugly 
creature — a creature so ugly as to know 
it is ugly looks at a very handsome 
one. 

At the close of his reverie, Mr. Con- 
yers took out a clumsy silver watch, and 
sat for a few minutes staring vacantly at 
the dial. 

“Close u})on six,!’ he muttered at 
last. “What time do they dine at the 
house, Sleeve ?” 


AURORA FLOYD. 


123 


“ Seven o’clock,” answered the Softy. 

“Seven o’clock. Then you’d have 
time to run there with a message or a 
letter, and catch ’em just as they’re 
going in to dinner.” 

The Softy stared aghast at his new 
master. 

“A message or a letter,” he repeated ; 
for Mr. Mellish ?” 

“ No ; for Mrs. Mellish.” 

“Rut I daren’t,” exclaimed Stephen 
Hargraves; “I daren’t go nigh the 
bouse, least of all to speak to her. I 
don’t forget the- day she horsewhipped 
me. I’ve never seen her since, and I 
don’t want to see her. You think I am 
a coward, don’t ’ee ?” he said, stopping 
suddenly, and looking at tlie trainer, 
whose handsome lips were curved into a 
contemptuous smile. “You think I’m 
a coward, don’t ’ee, now ?” he re- 
peated. 

“Well, I don’t think you are over 
valiant,” answered Mr. Conyers, “to be 
afraid of a woman, though ^he was the 
veriest devil that ever played fast and 
loose with a man.” 

“ Shall I tell you what it is I’m 
afraid of?” said Sleeve Ilargrlives, hiss- 
ing the words through his closed teeth 
in that unpleasant whisper peculiar to 
him. “ It isn’t Mrs. Mellish. It’s my- 
self. It’s — he grasped something 

in the loose pocket of his trousers as he 
spoke — “it’s this. I’m. afraid to trust 
myself a-nigh her, for fear I should 
spring upon her, and cut her throat 
from ear to ear. I’ve seen her in my 
dreams sometimes, with her beautiful 
white throat laid open, and streaming 
oceans of blood; but, for all that, she’s 
always had the broken whip in her hand, 
and she’s always laughed at me. I’ve 
had many a dream about her; but I’ve 
never seen her dead or quiet ; and I’ve 
never seen her without the whip.” 

The contemptuous smile died away 
from the trainer’s lips as Steeve Har- 
graves made this revelation of his sen- 
timents, and gave place to a darkly 
thoughtful expression, which overshad- 
owed the. whole of his face. 

“ I’ve no such wonderful love for 
Mrs. Mellish myself,” he said; “but 
she might live to be as old as IMethusa- 
lah for aught I care, if she’d” — he mut- 
tered something between his teeth, and 


walked up the little staircase to his bed- 
room, whistling a popular tune as he 
went. 

He came down again with a dirty- 
looking leather desk in his hand, which 
he flung carelessly on to the table. It 
was stuffed with crumpled, untidy-look- 
ing letters and papers, from among 
which he had considerable difficulty in 
selecting a tolerably clean sheet of note- 
pa})er. 

“ You’ll take a letter to Mrs. Mellish, 
my friend,” he said to Stephen, stoop- 
ing over the table and writing as he 
spoke; “and you’ll please to deliver it 
safe into her own hands. The windows 
will all be open this sultry weather, and 
you can watch till you see her in the 
drawing-room ; and when you do, con- 
trive to beckon her out, and give her 
this.” 

He had folded the sheet of paper by 
this time, and had sealed it carefuljy in 
an adhesive envelope. 

“ There’s no need of any address,” he 
said, as he handed the letter to Steeve 
Hargraves; “you know who it’s for, 
and you won’t give it to any body else. 
There, get along with you. She’ll say 
nothing to you, man, when she sees who 
the letter comes from.” 

The Softy looked darkly at his new 
employer; but Mr. James Conyers ra- 
ther piqued himself upon a quality which 
he called determination, but which his 
traducers designated obstinacy, and he 
made up his mind that no one but 
Steeve Hargraves should carry the let- 
ter. 

“ C.ome,” he said, “no nonsense, Mr. 
Stejihen. • Remember this : if I choose 
to employ you, and if I choose to send 
you on any errand whatsoever, there’s 
no one in that house will dare to ques- 
tion my right to do it. Get along with 
you.” 

He pointed as he spoke, with the 
stem of his pipe, to the Gothic roof and 
ivied chimneys of the old house gleam- 
ing amongst a mass of foliage. “ Get 
along with you, Mr. Ste})hen, and bring 
me an answer to that letter,” he added, 
lighting his pipe and seating himself in 
his favorite attitude upon the window- 
sill — an attitude which, like every thing 
about him, was a half-careless, half-de- 
fiant protest of his superiority to his 


124 


AUKORA FLOYD. 


position. “You needn’t wait for a 
written answer. Yes or no will be quite 
enough, you may tell Mrs. Mellish.” 

The Softy whispered something, half 
inaudible, between his teeth ; but he 
took the letter, and pulling his shabby 
rabbit-skin cap over his eyes, walked 
slowly off in the direction to which Mr. 
Conyers had pointed, with a half-con- 
temptuous action, a few moments be- 
fore. 

“ A queer fish,” muttered the trainer, 
lazily watching the awkward figure of 
bis attendant ; “ a queer fish ; but it’s 
rather hard if I can’t manage him. I’ve 
twisted his betters round my little finger 
before to-day.” 

Mr. Conyers forgot that there are 
some natures which, although inferior in 
every thing else, are strong by reason of 
their stubbornness, and not to be twisted 
out of their natural crookedness by any 
trick of management or skilfuluess of 
handling.’ 

Tlie evening was sunless but sultry ; 
there was a lowering darkness in the 
leaden sky, and an unnatural stillness in 
the atmosphere that prophesied the com- 
ing of a storm. The elements were 
taking breath for the struggle, and lying 
silently in wait against the wreaking of 
their fury. It would come by and by, 
the signal for the outburst, in a long, 
crackling peal of thunder that would 
shake the distant hills and flutter every 
leaf in the wood. 

The trainer looked with ^ indifferent 
eye at the ominous aspect of the heavens. 
“ I must go down to the stables, and 
send some of the boys to get the horses 
under shelter,” he said; “there’ll be a 
storm before long.” He took his stick 
and limped out of the cottage, still 
smoking; indeed, there were very few 
hours in the day, and not many during 
the night, in which Mr. Conyers was un- 
provided with his pipe and cigar. 

Sleeve Hargraves walked very slowly 
along the narrow pathway which led 
acro'ss the park to the flower-garden and 
lawn before the house. This north side 
of the park was wilder and less well kept 
than the rest; but the thick undergrowth 
swarmed with game, and the young hares 
flew backwards and forwards across the 
pathway, startled by the Softy’s sham- 
bling tread, while every now and then 
the partridges rose in pairs from the 


tangled grass, and skimmed away under 
the low roof of foliage. 

“ If I was to meet Mr. Mellish’s 
keeper here, he’d look at me black 
enough, I dare say,” muttered the Softy, 
“though I ain’t after the game. Lookin' 
at a pheasant’s high treason in his mind, 
curse him.” 

He put his hands low down in his 
pockets, as if scarcely able to resist the 
temptation to wring the neck of a splen- 
did cock-pheasant that was strutting 
through the high grass with a proud 
serenity of manner that implied a know- 
ledge of the game-laws. The trees on 
the north side of the park formed a 
species of leafy wall which screened the 
lawn, so that, coming from this northern 
side, the Softy emerged at once from the 
shelter into the smooth grass bordering 
this lawn, which was separated from the 
park by an invisible fence. 

As Steeve Hargraves, still sheltered 
from observation by the trees, approached 
this place, l^e saw that his errand was 
shortened, for Mrs. Mellish was leaning 
upon a low iron gate, with the dog Bow- 
wow, the dog that he had beaten, at her 
side. 

He had left the narrow pathway and 
struck in amongst the undergrowth, in 
order to make a shorter cut to the flow- 
er-garden, and as he came from under 
the shelter of the low branches which 
made a leafy cave about him, he left a 
long track of parted grass behind him, 
like the track of the f^ootstep of a tiger 
or the trail of a slow, ponderous serpent 
creeping towards its prey. 

Aurora .looked up at the sound of the 
shambling footstep, and, for the second 
time since she had beaten him, she en- 
countered the gaze of the Softy. She 
was very pale, almost as pale as her 
white dress, which was unenlivened by 
any scrap of color, and which hung 
about her in loose folds that gave a stat- 
uesque grace to her figure. She was 
dressed with such evident carelessness 
that every fold of muslin seemed to tell 
how far away her thoughts had been 
when that hasty toilette was made. Her 
black brows contracted as she looked at 
the Softy. 

“ I thought Mr. Mellish had dismissed 
you,” she said, “ and that you hud been 
forbidden to come here.” 

“ Yes, ma’am, Muster Mellish did turn 


AURORA FLOYD. 


me out of the house I’d lived in, man 
and boy, nigh upon forty years; but I’ve 
got a new place now, and my new mas- 
ter sent me to you with a letter.” 

Watching the effects of his words, 
the Softy saw a leaden change come 
over the pale face of his listener. 

“ What new master ?” she asked. 

Steeve Hargraves lifted his hand and 
pointed across his shoulder. She watched 
the slow motion of that clumsy hand, 
and her eyes seemed to grow larger as 
she saw the direction to which it 
pointed. 

“Your new master is the trainer, 
James Conyers, the man who lives jat the 
north lodge ?” she said. 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“ What does he want with you ?” she 
asked. 

“ I keep his place in order for him, 
ma’am, and run errands for him ; and 
I’ve brought a letter.” 

“A letter ? Ah, yes, give it me.” 

The Softy handed her the envelope. 
She took it slowly, without removing 
her eyes from his face, but watching him 
with a fixed and earnest look that seemed 
as if it would have fathomed something 
beneath the dull red eyes which met 
hers. A look that betrayed some doubt- 
ful terror hidden in her own breast, and 
a vague desire to penetrate the secrets 
of his. 

She did not look at the letter, but 
held it half-crushed in the hand hanging 
by her side. 

“You can go,’.’ she said. 

“I was to wait for an answer.” 

The black brows contracted again, 
and this time a bright gleam of fury 
kindled in the great black eyes. 

“ There is no answer,” she said, 
thrusting the letter into the bosom of 
her dress, and turning to leave the gate; 
“ there is no answer, and there shall be 
none till I choose. Tell your master 
that.” 

“It wasn’t to be a written answer,” 
persisted the Softy ; “it was to be yes 
or no, that’s all ; but I was to be sure 
and wait for it.” 

The half-witted creature saw some 
feeling of hate and fury in her face 
beyond her contemptuous hatred of 
himself, and took a savage pleasure in 
tormenting her. She struck her foot 
impatiently upon the grass, and plucking 


125 

the letter from her breast, tore open the 
envelope, and read the few lines it con- 
tained. Few as they were, she stood for 
nearly five minutes with the open letter 
in her hand, separated from the Softy by 
the iron fence and lost in thought. The 
silence was only broken during this pause 
by an occasional growl from the mastiff, 
who lifted his heavy lip, and showed his 
feeble teeth for the edification of his old 
enemy. 

She tore the letter into a hundred 
morsels, and flung it from her before she 
spoke. “Yes,” she said at last ; “tell 
your master that.” 

Steeve Hargraves touched his cap and 
went back through the grassy trail he 
had left, to carry this message to the 
trainer. 

“ She hates me bad enough,” he mut- 
tered, as he stopped once to look back 
at the quiet white figure on the lawn, 
“ but she hates him worse.” 


CHAPTER XYIII. 

OUT IN THE RAIN. 

The second dinner-bell rang five min- 
utes after the Softy had left Aurora, and 
Mr. John Meilish came out upon the 
lawn to look for his wife. He came 
whistling across the grass, and whisking 
the roses with his pocket-handkerchief 
in very gaiety of heart. He had quite 
forgotten the anguish of that miserable 
morning after the receipt of Mr. Pas- 
tern’s letter. He had forgotten all but 
that his Aurora was the loveliest and 
dearest of women, and that he trusted 
her with the boundless faith of his big, 
honest heart. “Why should I doubt 
such a noble, impetuous creature ?” he 
thought ; “ doesn’t every feeling and 
every sentiment write itself upon her 
lovely, expressive face in characters the 
veriest fool could read ? If I please 
her, what bright smiles light up in her 
black eyes I If I vex her, — as I do, 
poor awkward idiot that I am, a hundred 
times a day, — how the two black arches 
contract over her pretty impertinent 
nose, while the red lips pout defiance 
and disdain ! Shall I doubt her because 
she keeps one secret from me, and freely 


126 


AURORA FLOYD. 


tells me I must for ever remain igno- 
rant of it ; when an artful woman would 
try to set my mind at rest with some 
shallow fiction invented to deceive me ? 
Heaven bless her ! no doubt of her shall 
ever darken my life again, come what 
may.” 

It was easy for Mr, Hellish to make 
this mental vow, believing fully that the 
storm was past, and that lasting fair 
weather had set in. 

“Lolly, darling,” he said, winding his 
great arm round his wife’s waist, “ I 
thought I had lost you.” 

She looked up at him with a sad smile. 

“Would it grieve you much, John,” 
she said in a low voice, “if you were 
really to lose me ?” 

lie started as if he had been struck, 
and looked anxiously at her pale face. 

“Would it grieve me, Lolly !” he re- 
peated; “not for long; for the people 
who came to your funeral would come 
to mine. But, my darling, my darlitig, 
what can have made you ask this ques- 
tion ? Are you ill, dearest? You have 
been looking pale and tired for the last 
few days, and I have thought nothing of 
it. What a careless wretch I am !” 

“No, no, John,” she said; “I don’t 
mean that. I know you would grieve, 
dear, if I were to die. But suppose 
something were to happen which would 
se})arate us for ever, — something which 
would compel me to leave this place 
never to return to it, — what then ?” 

“ What then, Lolly ?” answered her 
husband gravely. “ I w’ould rather see 
your coffin laid in the empty niche be- 
side my mother’s in the vault yonder,” — 
he pointed in the direction of the parish- 
church, which was close to the gates of 
the park, — “ thani would part with you 
thus. I would rather know you to be 
dead and happy than I would endure 
any doubt about your fate. Oh, my 
darling, why do you speak of these 
things ? I couldn’t part with you — I 
couldn’t. I would rather take you in my 
arras and plunge with you into the pond 
in the wood ; I would rather send a bul- 
let into your heart, and see you lying 
murdered at my feet.” 

“John, John, my dearest and truest,” 
she said, her face lighting up with a new 
brightness, like the sudden breaking of 
the sun through a leaden cloud, “ not 
another word, dear; we will never part. 


Why should we? There is very little 
upon this wide earth that money cannot 
buy ; and it shall help to buy our hap- 
piness. We will never part, darling; 
never.” 

She broke into a joyous laugh as 
she watched his anxious, half- won dering 
face. 

“Why, you foolish John, how fright- 
ened you look!” she said. “Haven’t 
you discovered yet that I like to torment 
you now and then with such questions 
as these, just to see your big blue eyes 
open to their widest extent ? Come, 
dear; Mrs. Powell will look white thun- 
der at us when we go in, and make some 
meek conventional replyto our apologies 
for this delay, to the effect that she 
doesn’t care in the least hovv long she 
waits for dinner, and that on the whole 
she would rather never have any dinner 
at all. Isn’t it strange, John, how that 
woman hates me ?” 

“ Hates you, dear, when you’re so 
kind to her 1” 

“But she hates me for being kind to 
her, John. If I were to give her my 
diamond-necklace, she’d hate me for hav- 
ing it to give. She hates us because 
we’re rich and young and handsome,” 
said Aurora, laughing ; “and the very 
opposite of her namby-pamby, pale-faced 
self.” 

It was strange that from this moment 
Aurora seemed to regain her natural 
gaiety of spirits, and to be what she had 
been before the receipt of Mr. Pastern’s 
letter. Whatever dark cloud had ho- 
vered over her head since the day upon 
which that simple epistle had caused 
such a terrible effect, that threatening 
shadow seemed to have been suddenly 
removed. Mrs. Walter Powell was not 
slow to perceive this change. The eyes 
of love, clear-sighted though they may 
be, are dull indeed beside the eyes of 
hate. !r/?os(? are never deceived. Aurora 
had wandered out of the drawing-room, 
listless and dispirited, to stroll wearily 
upon the lawn; — Mrs. Powell, seated in 
one of the windows, had watched her 
every movement, and had seen her in the 
distance speaking to some one (she had 
] been unable to distinguish the Softy from 
i her post of observation) ; — and this same 
j Aurora returned to the house almost 
j another creature. There was a look of 
I determination about the beautiful mouth 


AURORA FLOYD. 


(wliicli female critics called too wide), a 
look not usual to the rosy lips, and a 
resolute brightness in the eyes, which had 
some significance surely, Mrs. Powell 
thought, if she could only have found the 
key to that hidden meaning. Ever since 
Aurora’s brief illness, the poor woman 
had been groping for this key — groping 
in mazy darknesses which baffled her 
utmost powers of penetration. Who and 
what was this groom, that Aurora should 
write to him, as she most decidedly had 
written ? Why was he to express no 
surprise, and wlmt cause could there be 
for his expressing any surprise in the 
simple economy of Mellish Park ? The 
mazy darknesses were more impenetrable 
than the blackest night, and Mrs. Powell 
well nigh gave up all hope of ever find- 
ing any clue to the mystery. And now 
behold, a new complication had arisen 
in Aurora’s altered spirits. John Mel- 
lish was delighted with this alteration. 
He talked and laughed until the glasses 
near him vibrated with his noisy mirth. 
He drank so much sparkling Moselle 
that his butler Jarvis (who had grown 
gray in the service of the old squire, and 
had poured out Master John’s first glass 
of champagne) refused at last to furnish 
him with any more of that beverage ; 
olfering him in its stead some very ex- 
pensive hock, the name of which was in 
fourteen unpronounceable syllables, and 
which John tried to like, but didn’t. 

“We’ll fill the house with visitors for 
the shooting season, Lolly, darling,” 
said Mr. Mellish. “If they come on 
the 1st of September, they’ll all be com- 
fortably settled for the Leger. The 
dear old dad will come of course, and 
trot about on his white pony like the 
best of men and bankers in Christen- 
dom. Captain and Mrs. Bulstrode will 
come too ; and we shall see how our lit- 
tle Lucy looks, and whether solemn Tal- 
bot beats her in the silence of the mat- 
rimonial chamber. Then there’s Hunter, 
and a host of fellows ; and you must 
write me a list of any nice people you’d 
like to ask down here; and we’ll have a 
glorious autumn ; won’t we, Lolly ?” 

“ I hope so, dear,” said Mrs. Mellish, 
after a little pause, and a repetition of 
John’s eager question. She had not 
been listening very attentively to John’s j 
plans for the future, and she startled 
him rather by asking him a question ! 


127 

very wide from the subject upon which 
he had been speaking. 

“ How long do the fastest vessels take 
going to Australia, John ?” she asked 
quietly. 

Mr. Mellish stopped with his glass in 
his hand to stare at his wife as she asked 
this question. 

“ How long do the fastest vessels 
take to go to Australia ?” he repeated. 
“Good gracious, me, Lolly,” how should 
I know ? Three weeks or a month — no, 
I mean three months ; but, in mercy’s 
name, Aurora, why do you want to 
know ?” 

“ The average length of the voyage 
is, I believe, about three months, but 
some fast-sailing packets do it in seventy, 
or even in sixty-eight days,” inter))osed 
Mrs. Powell, looking sharply at Auro- 
ra’s abstracted face from under cover of 
her white eyelashes. 

“But why, in goodness name, do you 
want to know, Lolly ?” repeated John 
Mellish. “You don’t want to go to 
Australia, and you don’t know any body 
who’s going to Australia,” 

“Perhaps Mrs. Mellish is interested 
in the Female Emigration movement,” 
suggested Mrs. Powell; “it is a most 
delightful work.” 

.Aurora replied neither to the direct 
nor the indirect question. The cloth 
had been removed (for no modern cus- 
toms had ever disturbed the conservative 
economy of Mellish Park), and Mrs. 
Mellish sat, with a cluster of pale cher- 
ries in her hand, looking at the reflec- 
tion of her own face in the depths of the 
shining mahogany. 

“ Lolly 1” exclaimed John Mellish, 
after watching his wife for some minutes, 
“you are as grave as a judge. What 
can you be thinking of?” 

She looked up at him with a bright 
smile, and rose to leave the dining-room. 

“ I’ll tell you one of these days, John,” 
she said. “ Are you coming with us, or 
are you going out upon the lawn to 
smoke ?” 

“ If you’ll come with me, dear,” he 
answered, returning her smile with the 
frank glance of unchangeable affection 
which always beamed in his eyes when 
they rested on his wife. “ I’ll go out 
I and smoke a cigar, if you’ll come with 
me, Lolly.” 

! “ You foolish old Yorkshircman,” 




128 


AURORA FLOYD. 


said Mrs. Mellish, laughing, “I verily 
believe you’d like me to smoke one of 
your choice Manillas, by way of keeping 
you company.” 

“No, darling, I’d never wish to see 
you do any thing that didn’t square — 
that wasn’t compatible,” interposed Mr. 
Mellish gravely, “ with the manners of 
the noblest Jady, and the duties of the 
truest wife in England. If I love to see 
you ride across country with a red 
feather in your hat, it is because I think 
that the good old sport of English gen- 
tlemen was meant to be shared by their 
wives, rather than by people w^hom I 
w^ould not like to name ; and because 
there is a fair chance that the sight of 
your Spanish hat and scarlet plume at 
the meet may go some w^ay towards 
keeping Miss Wilhelmina de Lancy 
(who was born plain Scroggins, and 
christened Sarah), out of the field. I 
think our British wdves and mothers 
might have the battle in their own hands, 
and win the victory for themselves and 
their daughters, if they were a little 
braver in standing to their ground, if 
they were not quite so tenderly indul- 
gent to the sins of eligible young noble- 
men, and, ill their estimate of a man’s 
qualifications , for the marriage state, 
w^ere not so entirely guided by the figures 
in his banker’s booL It’s a sad world, 
Lolly; but John Mellish, of Mellish 
Park, was never meant to set it right.” 

Mr. Mellish stood on the threshold 
of a glass-door which opened on to a 
flight of steps leading to the lawn, as he 
delivered himself of this homily, the 
gravity of which was quite at variance 
with the usual tenor of his discourse, 
lie had a cigar in his hand, and was 
going to light it when Aurora stopped 
liim. 

“John, dear,” she said, “my most 
unbusiness-like of darlings, have you 
forgotten that poor Langley is so anx- 
ious to see you, that he may give you 
up the old accounts before the new 
trainer takes the stable business into his 
hands ? He was here half au hour be- 
fore dinner, and begged that you would 
see him to-night.” 

Mr. Mellish shrugged his shoulders, 

“ Langley’s as honest a fellow^ as ever 
breathed,” he said. “ I don’t wmnf to 
look into his accounts. I know what 


the stable costs me yearly on an average 
and that’s enough.” 

“ But for his satisfaction, dear.” 

“Well, well, Lolly, to-morrow morn- 
ing, then.” 

“No, dear, I want you to ride out 
with me to-morrow.” 

“To-morrow evening.” 

“ ‘ You meet the Captains at the Cita- 
del,’” said Aurora, laughing; “that is 
to say, you dine at Holmbush with 
Colonel Pevensey. Come, darling, I 
insist on your being business-like for 
once in a way; come to your sanctum 
sanctorum, and we’ll send for Langley, 
and look into the accounts.” 

The pretty tyrant linked her arm in 
his, and led him to the other end of the 
house, and into that very room in which 
she had swooned away at the hearing 
of Mr. Pastern’s letter. She looked 
thoughtfully out at the dull evening sky 
as she closed the windows. The storm 
had not yet come, but the ominous 
clouds still brooded low over the earth, 
and the sultry atmosphere was heavy 
and airless. Mrs. Mellish made a won- 
derful show of her business-habits, and 
appeared to be very much interested in 
the mass of cornchandlers, veterinary 
surgeons, saddlers, and harness-makers’ 
accounts with which the old trainer re- 
spectfully bewildered his master. But 
about ten minutes after John had set- 
tled himself to his weary labor, Aurora 
threw down the pencil with which she 
had been working a calculation (by a 
process of so wildly original a nature, 
as to utterly revolutionize Cocker, and 
annihilate the hackneyed notion that 
twice two are four,) and floated lightly 
out of the room, with some vague pro- 
mise of coming back presently, leaving 
Mr. Mellish to arithmetic and despair. 

Mrs. Walter Powell was seated in 
the drawing-room reading, w'hen Aurora 
entered that apartment with a large 
black-lace shawl wrapped about her 
head and shoulders. Mrs. Mellish had 
evidently . expected to find the room 
empty ; for she started and drew back 
at the sight of the pale-faced widow, 
who was seated in a distant window, 
making the most of the last faint rays 
of summer twilight. Aurora paused for 
a moment a few paces within the door, 
and then walked deliberately across the 


AURORA FLOYD. 


room towards the furthest window from 
that at which Mrs. Powell was seated. 

“Are you going out in the garden 
this dull evening, Mrs. Mellish V’ asked 
the ensign’s widow. 

Aurora stopped half-way between the 
window and the door to answer her. 

“ Yes,” she said coldly. 

“Allow me to advise you not to go 
far. We are going to have a storm.” 

“ I don’t think so.” 

“What, my clear Mrs. Mellish, not 
with that thunder-cloud yonder?” 

“ I will take my chance of being 
caught in it, then. The weather has 
been threatening all the afternoon. The 
house is insupportable to-night.” 

“But you will not surely go far.” 

Mrs. Mellish did not appear to over- 
hear this remonstrance. She hurried 
through the open window, and out upon 
the lawn, striking northwards towards 
that little iron gate across which she 
had talked to the Softy. 

The arch of the leaden sky seemed to 
contract above the tree-tops in the 
park, shutting in the earth as if with a 
roof of hot iron, after the fashion of 
those cunningly contrived metal torture- 
chambers which we read of ; but the 
rain had not yet come. 

“ What can take her into the garden 
on such an evening as this ?” thought 
Mrs. Powell, as she watched the white 
dress receding in the dusky twilight. 
“ It will be dark in ten minutes, and 
she is not usually so fond of going out 
alone.” 

The ensign’s -widow laid down the 
book in which she had appeared so 
deeply interested, and went to her own 
room, where she selected a comfortable 
gray cloak from a heap of primly folded 
garments in her capacious wardrobe. 
She muffled herself in this cloak, hurried 
down stairs with a soft but rapid step, 
and went out into the garden through a 
little lobby near John Mellish’s room. 
The blinds in the little sanctum were 
not drawn down, and Mrs. Powell could 
see the master of the house bending over 
his paper under the light of a reading- 
lamp, with the rheumatic trainer seated 
by his side. It was by this time quite 
dark, but Aurora’s white dress was 
faintly visible upon the other side of the 
lawn. 

Mrs. Mellish was standing beside the 

8 


129 

little iron gate when the ensign’s widow 
emerged from the house. The white 
dress was motionless for some time, and 
the pale watcher, lurking under the 
shade of a long verandah, began to 
think that her trouble was wasted, and 
that perhaps, after all, Aurora had no 
special purpose in this evening ramble. 

Mrs. Walter Powell felt cruelly dis- 
appointed. Always on the watch for 
some clue to the secret whose existence 
she had discovered, she had fondly hoped 
that even this unseasonable ramble 
might be some link in the mysterious 
chain she was so anxious to fit together. 
But it appeared that she was mistaken. 
The unseasonable ramble was very likely 
nothing more than one of Aurora’s ca- 
prices — a womanly foolishness signifying 
nothing. 

No ! The white dress was no longer 
motionless, and in the unnatural stillness 
of the hot night Mrs. Powell heard the 
distant scrooping noise of a hinge re- 
volving slowly, as if guided by a cau- 
tious hand. Mrs. Mellish had opened 
the iron gate, and had passed to the 
other side of the invisible barrier which 
separated the gardens from the park. 
In another moment she had disappeared 
under the shadow of the trees which 
made a belt about the lawn. 

Mrs. Powell paused, almost terrified 
by her unlooked-for discovery. 

Wliat, in the name of all that was 
darkly mysterious, could Mrs. Mellish 
have to do between nine and ten o’clock 
on the north side of the park — the 
wildly kept, deserted north side, in 
which, from year’s end to year’s end, no 
one but the keepers ever walked ? 

The blood rushed hotly up to Mrs. 
Powell’s pale face, as she suddenly re- 
membered that the disused, dilapidated 
lodge upon this north side had been 
given to the new trainer as a residence. 
Remembering this was nothing, but re- 
membering this in connection with that 
mysterious letter signed “ A.” was 
enough to send a thrill of savage, hor- 
rible joy through the dull veins of the 
dependent. What should she do ? Fol- 
low Mrs. Mellish, and discover where 
she was going ? IIow far would this be 
a safe thing to attempt ? 

She turned back and looked once 
more through the window of John’s 
room. He was still bending over the 


130 


AURORA FLOYD. 


papers, still in as apparently hopeless 
confusion of mind. There seemed little 
chance of his business being finished 
very quickly. The starless night and 
her dark dress alike sheltered the spy 
from observation. 

“ If I were close behind her, she would 
never see me,’^ she thought. 

She struck across the lawn to the iron 
gate and passed into the park. The 
brambles and the tangled undergrowth 
caught at her dress as she pansed for a 
moment looking about her in the sum- 
mer night. 

There was no trace of Aurora’s white 
figure among the leafy alleys stretching 
in wild disorder before her. 

“ I’ll not attempt to find the path she 
took,” thought Mrs. Powell ; “ I know 
where to find her.” 

She groped her way into the narrow 
footpath leading to the lodge. She was 
not sufficiently familiar with the place 
to take the short cut which the Softy 
had made for himself through the grass 
that afternoon, and she was some time 
walking from tlte iron gate to the lodge. 

The front windows of this rustic lodge 
faced the road and the disused north 
gates ; the back of the building looked 
towards the path down which Mrs. 
Powell went, and the two small windows 
in this back wall were both dark. 

The ensign’s widow crept softly round 
to the front, looked about her cautiously, 
and listened. There was no sound but 
the occasional rustle of a leaf, tremulous 
even in the still atmosphere, as if by 
some internal prescience of the coming 
storm. With a slow, careful footstep, 
she stole towards the little rustic window 
and looked into the room within. 

She had not been mistaken when she 
had said that she knew where to find 
Aurora. 

Mrs. Mellish was standing with her 
back to the window. Exactly opposite 
to her sat James Conyers the trainer, in 
an easy attitude, and with his pipe in 
his mouth. The little table was between 
them, and the one candle which lighted 
the room was drawn close to Mr. Con- 
yer’s elbow, and had evidently been used 
by him for the lighting of his pipe. Au- 
rora was speaking. The eager listener 
could hear her voice, but not her words ; 
and she could see by the trainer’s face that 
he was listening intently. He was listen- 


ing intently, but a dark frown con- 
tracted his handsome eyebrows, and it 
was very evident that he was not too 
well satisfied with the bent of the con- 
versation. 

He looked up when Aurora ceased 
speaking, shrugged his shoulders, and 
took his pipe out of his mouth. Mrs. 
Powell, with her pale face close against 
the window-pane watched him intently. 

He pointed with a careless gesture to 
an empty chair near Aurora, but she 
shook her head contemptuously, and 
suddenly turned towards the window ; 
so suddenly, that Mrs. Powell had 
scarcely time to recoil into the darkness 
before Aurora had unfastened the iron 
latch and flung the narrow casement 
open. 

“I cannot endure this intolerable 
heat,” she exclaimed, impatiently ; “I 
have said all I have to say, and need 
only wait for your answer.” 

“You don’t give me much time for 
consideration,” he said, with an insolent 
coolness which was in strange contrast 
to the restless vehemence of her manner. 
“ What sort of answer do you want ?” 

“ Yes or no.” 

“ Nothing more ?” 

“ No, nothing more. You know lU}’ 
conditions ; they are all written here,” 
she added, putting her hand upon an 
open paper which lay upon the table ; 
“ they are all written clearly enough for 
a child to understand. Will you accept 
them? Yes or no ?” 

“That depends upon circumstances,” 
he answered, filling his pipe, and look- 
ing admiringly at the nail of his little 
finger, as he pressed the tobacco into 
the bowl. 

“Upon what circumstances ?” 

“Upon the inducement which you 
offer, my dear Mrs. Mellish.” 

“ You mean the price ?” 

“ That’s a low expression,” he said, 
laughing ; “ but I suppose we both mean 
the same thing. The inducement must 
be a strong one which will make me do 
all that” — he pointed to the written pa- 
per — “ and it must take the form of solid 
cash. How much is it to be ?” 

“That is for you to say. Remember 
what I have told you. Decline to- 
night, and I telegraph to my father to- 
morrow morning, telling him to alter 
his will.” 


AURORA FLOYD. 


131 


Suppose the old gentleman should 
be carried off in the interim, and leave 
tliat pleasant sheet of parchment stand- 
ing as it is. I hear that he’s old and 
feeble ; it might be worth while calculat- 
ing the odds upon such an event. I’ve 
risked my money on a worse chance be- 
fore to-night.” 

She turned upon him. with so dark a 
frown as he said this, that the insolently 
heartless words died upon his lips, and 
left him looking at her gravely. 

“Egad,” he said, “you’re as great a 
devil as ever you were. I doubt if that 
isn’t a good offer after all. Give me ten 
thousand down, and I’ll take it.” 

“Ten thousand pounds I” 

“ I ought to have said twenty, but I’ve 
always stood in my own light.” 

Mrs. Powell, crouching down beneath 
the open casement had heard every word 
of this brief dialogue ; but at this junc- 
ture, half-forgetful of all danger in her 
eagerness to listen, she raised her head 
until it was nearly on a level with the 
window-sill. As she did so, she recoiled 
with a sudden thrill of terror. She felt 
a puff of hot breath upon her cheek, and 
the garments of a man rustling against 
her own. 

She was not the only listener. 

The second spy was Stephen Har- 
graves the Softy. 

“ Hush !” he whispered, grasping Mrs. 
Powell by the wrist, and pinning her in 
her crouching attitude by the muscular 
force of his horny hand ; “ it’s only me, 
Steeve the Softy, you know ; the stable- 
helper that s/?e” (he hissed out the per- 
sonal pronoun with such a furious im- 
petus that it seemed to whistle sharply 
through the stillness), — “the fondy that 
she horsewhipped. I know you, and I 
know you’re here to listen. He sent me 
into Doncaster to fetch this” (he pointed 
to a bottle under his arm) ; “ he thought 
it would take me four or five hours to go 
and get back ; but I ran all the way, for 
I knew there was summat oop.” 

He wiped his streaming fiice with the 
ends of his coarse neckerchief as he fin- 
ished speaking. His bre th came in 
panting gasps, and Mrs. Powell could 
hear the laborious beating of his heart 
in the stillness. 

“I won’t tell o’ you,” he said, “and 
you won’t tell o’ me. I’ve got the stripes 
upon my shoulder where she cut me with 


the whip to this day. I look at ’em 
sometimes, and they help to keep me in 
mind. She’s a fine madam, ain’t she, 
and a great lady too ? Ay, sure she is ; 
but she comes to meet her husband’s 
servant on the sly, after dark, for all 
that. Maybe the day isn’t far off when 
sheHl be turned away from these gates, 
and warned off this ground ; and the 
merciful Lord send that I live to see it. 
Hush !” 

With her w’rist still pinioned in his 
strong grasp, he motioned her to be 
silent, and bent his pale face forward ; 
every feature rigid, in the listening ex- 
pectancy of his hungry gaze. 

“Listen,” *he whispered; “listen! 
Every fresh word damns her deeper than 
the last.” 

The trainer was the first to speak after 
this pause in the dialogue within the cot- 
tage. He had quietly smoked out his 
pipe, and had emptied the ashes of his 
tobacco upon the table before he took 
up the thread of the conversation at the 
point at which he had dropped it. 

“ Ten thousand pounds,” he said ; 
“that is the offer, and I think it ought 
to be taken freely. Ten thousand down, 
iji Bank-of-England notes (fives and tens, 
higher figures might be awkward), or 
sterling coin of the realm. You under- 
stand ; ten thousand down. That’s my 
alternative ; or I leave this place to- 
morrow morning — with all belonging to 
me.” 

“ By which course you would get no- 
thing,” said Mrs. John Mellish, quietly. 

“ Shouldn’t I ? What does the chap 
in the play get for his trouble when the 
blackamoor smothers his wife ?• I should 
get nothing — but my revenge upon a 
tiger-cat, whose claws have left a mark 
upon me that I shall carry to my grave.” 
He lifted his hair with a careless gesture 
of his hand, and pointed to a scar upon 
his forehead, a white mark, barely visible 
in the dim light of the tallow-candle. 
“I’m a good-natured, easy-going fellow, 
Mrs. John Mellish, but I don’t forget. 
Is it to be the ten thousand pounds, or 
war to the knife ?” 

Mrs. Powell waited eagerly for Au- 
rora’s answer ; but before it came a 
round heavy rain-drop pattered upon the 
light hair of the ensign’s widow. The 
hood of her cloak had fallen back, leav- 
ing her head uncovered. This one large 


AURORA FLOYD. 


132 

drop was the warning of the coming 
storm. The signal peal of thunder 
rumbled slowly and hoarsely in the dis- 
tance, and a pale flash of lightning 
trembled upon the white faces of the 
two listeners. 

“Let me go,” whispered Mrs. Powell, 
'• let me go ; I must get back to the 
house before the rain begins.” 

The Softy slowly relaxed his iron grip 
upon her wrist. He had held it uncon- 
sciously in his utter abstraction to all 
things except the two speakers in the 
cottage. 

Mrs. Powell rose from her knees, and 
crept noiselessly away from the lodge. 
She remembered the vital necessity of 
getting back to the house before Aurora, 
and of avoiding the shower. Her wet 
garments would betray her if she did not 
succeed in escaping the coming storm. 
She was of a spare, wizen figure, encum- 
bered with no superfluous flesh, and she 
ran rapidly along the narrow sheltered 
pathway leading to the iron gate through 
which she had followed Aurora. 

The heavy rain-drops fell at long in- 
tervals upon the leaves. A second and 
a third peal of thunder rattled along the 
earth, like the horrible roar of some hun- 
gry animal creeping nearer and nearer 
to its prey. Blue flashes of faint light- 
ning lit up the tangled intricacies of the 
wood, but the fullest fury of the storm 
had not yet burst forth. 

The rain-drops came at shorter inter- 
vals as Mrs. Powell passed out of the 
w'ood, through the little iron gate ; faster 
still as she hurried across the lawn ; 
faster yet as she reached the lobby-door, 
which she had left ajar an hour before, 
and sat down panting upon a little bench 
within, to recover her breath before she 
went any further. She was still sitting 
on this bench, when the fourth peal of 
thunder shook the low roof above her 
head, and the rain dropped from the 
starless sky with such a rushing impetus, 
that it seemed as if a huge trap-door 
had been opened in the heavens, and a 
celestial ocean let down to flood the 
earth. 

“ I think my lady will be nicely 
caught,” muttered Mrs. Walter Powell. 

She threw her cloak aside upon the 
lobby bench, and went through a pas- 
sage leading to the hall. One of the 
servants was shutting the hall door. 


“Have you shut the drawing-room 
windows, Wilson ?” she asked. 

“No, ma’am ; I am afraid Mrs. Mel- 
lish is out in the rain. Jarvis is getting 
ready to go and look for her, with a 
lantern and the gig-umbrella.” 

“ Then Jarvis can stop where he is; 
Mrs. Mellish came in half an hour ago. 
You may shut all the windows, and 
close the house for the ;iight.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“ By the by, what o’clock is it, Wil- 
son ? My watch is slow.” 

“ A quarter past ten, ma’am, by the 
dining-room clock.” 

The man locked the hall-door, and 
put up an immense iron bar, which 
worked with some rather complicated 
machinery, and had a bell hanging at 
one end of it, for the frustration of all 
burglarious and designing ruffians. 

From the hall the man went to the 
drawing-room, where he carefully fast- 
ened the long range of windows ; from 
the drawing-room to the lobby ; and 
from the lobby to the dining-room, 
where he locked the half glass-door 
opening into the garden. This being 
done, all communication between the 
house and the garden was securely cutoff*. 

“ He shall know of her goings-on at 
any rate,” thought Mrs. Powell, as she 
dogged the footsteps of the servant to 
see that he did his work. The Mellish 
household did not take very kindly to 
this deputy mistress ; and when the foot- 
man went back to the servants’ hall, he 
informed his colleagues that she was 
pryin’ and pokin’ about sharper than 
hever, and vvatchin’ of a feller like a 
hold ’ouse-cat. Mr. Wilson was a Cock- 
ney, and had been newly imported into 
the establishment. 

When the ensign’s widow had seen 
the last bolt driven home to its socket, 
and the last key turned in its lock, she 
went back to the drawing-room and 
seated herself at the lamp-lit table, with 
some delicate morsel of old maidish 
fancy-work, which seemed to be the 
converse of Penelope’s embroidery, as it 
appeared to advance at night, and re- 
trograde by day. She had hastily 
smoothed her hair and rearranged heg 
dress, and she looked as uncomfortably 
neat as w'hen she came down to break- 
fast in the fresh primness of her matuti- 
nal toilette. 


AURORA FLOYD. 


She had been sittinj^ at her work for 
about ten minutes when John Mellish 
entered the room, emerging weary but 
triumphant from his struggle with the 
simple rules of multiplication an^ sub- 
traction. Mr. Mellish had evidently 
suffered severely in the 'contest. His 
thick brown hair was tumbled into a 
rough mass that stood nearly upright 
upon his head, his cravat was untied, 
and his shirt-collar thrown open for the 
relief of his capacious throat ; and these 
and many other marks of the struggle he 
bore upon him when he entered the 
drawing-room. 

“ I’ve broken loose from the school at 
last, Mrs. Powell,” he said, flinging his 
big frame upon one of the sofas, to the 
imminent peril of the German spring- 
cushions ; “ I’ve broken away before the 
flag dropped, for Langley would have 
liked to keep me there till midnight. He 
followed me to the door of this room 
with fourteen bushels of oats that was 
down in the cornchandler’s account and 
was not down in the book he keeps to 
check the cornchandler. Why the doose 
don’t he put it down in his book and 
make it right then, I ask, instead of 
bothering me ? What’s the good of his 
keeping an account to check the corn- 
chandler if he don’t make his account 
the same as the cornchandler’s ? But it’s 
all over 1” he added, with a great sigh 
of relief, “ it’s all over ; and all I can 
say is, I hope the new trainer isn’t 
honest.” 

“ Do you know much of the new 
trainer, Mr. Mellish ?” asked Mrs. 
Powell blandly ; rather as if she wished 
to amuse her employer by the exertion 
of her conversational powers than for 
the gratification of any mundane curi- 
osity. 

“ Doosed little,” answered John indif- 
ferently. “ I haven’t even seen the fel- 
low yet; but John Pastern recommend- 
ed him, and he’s sure to be all right ; 
besides, Aurora knows the man : he was 
in her father’s service once.” 

“ Oh, indeed I” said Mrs. Powell, 
giving the two insignificant words a sig- 
nificant little jerk ; “ oh, indeed, Mrs. 
Mellish knows him, does she ? Then of 
course he’s a trustworthy person. He’s 
a remarkably handsome young man.” 

“ Keraarkably handsome, is he ?” said 


133 

Mr. Mellish, with a careless laugh. 
“ Then I suppose all the maids will be 
falling in love with him, and neglecting 
their work to look out of the windows 
that open on to the stable-yard, hey ? 
That’s the sort of thing when a man has 
a handsome groom, ain’t it ? Susan and 
Sarah, and all the rest of ’em, take to 
cleaning the windows and wearing new 
ribbons in their caps ?” 

“I don’t know any thing about that, 
Mr. Mellish,” answered the ensign’s 
widow, simpering over her work as if 
the question they were discussing was 
so very far away that it was impossible 
for her to be serious about it ; “ but my 
experience has thrown me into a very 
large number of families.” (She said 
this with perfect truth, as she had occu- 
pied so many situations that her ene- 
mies had come to declare she was una- 
ble to remain in any one household 
above a twelvemonth, by reason of her 
employer’s discovery of her real nature.) 
“ I have occupied positions of trust and 
confidence,” continued Mrs. Powell, 
“ and I regret to say that I have seen 
much domestic misery arise from the 
employment of handsome servants, whose 
appearance and manners are superior to 
their station. Mr. Conyers is not at all 
the sort of person I should like to see in 
a household in which I had the charge 
of young ladies.” 

A sick, half-shuddering faintness crept 
through John’s herculean frame as Mrs. 
Powell expressed herself thus ; so vague 
a feeling that he scarcely knew whether 
it was mental or physical, any better 
than he knew what it was that he dis- 
liked in this speech of the ensign’s 
widow. The feeling was as transient as 
it was vague. John’s honest blue eyes 
looked wonderingly round the room. 

“Where’s Aurora?” he said, “gone 
to bed ?” 

“ I believe Mrs. Mellish has retired to 
rest,” Mrs Powell answered. 

“ Then T shall go too. The place is 
as dull as a dungeon without her,” said 
Mr. Mellish, with agreeable candor. 
“Perhaps you’ll be good enough to 
make me a glass of brandy-and-water 
before I go, Mrs. Powell, for I’ve got 
the cold shivers after those accounts.” 

He rose to ring the bell ; but before 
he had gone three paces from the sofa, 


134 


AURORA FLOYD. 


an impatient knocking at the closed outer 
shutters of one of the windows arrested 
his footsteps. 

“ Who, in mercy’s name, is that ?” he 
exclaimed, starting at the direction from 
which the noise came, but not attempt- 
ing to respond to the summons. 

Mrs. Powell looked up to listen with 
a face expressive of nothing but inno- 
cent wonder. 

The knocking was repeated more 
loudly and impatiently than before. 

“It must be one of the servants,” mut- 
tered John; “but why doesn’t he go 
round to the back of the house ? I 
can’t keep the poor devil out upon such 
a night as this, though,” he added good- 
naturedly, unfastening the window as he 
spoke. The sashes opened inwards, the 
Yenetian shutters outwards. He pushed 
the shutters open, and looked out into 
the darkness and the rain. 

Aurora, shivering in her drenched 
garments, stood a few paces from him, 
with the rain beating down straight and 
heavily upon her head. 

Even in that obscurity her husband 
recognized her. 

“ My darling,” he cried, “ is it you ? 
You out at such a time, and on such a 
night ? Come in, for mercy’s sake ; 
you must be drenched to the skin.” 

She came into the room ; the wet 
hanging in her muslin dress streamed 
out upon the carpet on which she trod, 
and the folds of her lace shawl clung 
tightly about her figure. 

“ Why did you let them shut the win- 
dows ?” she said, turning to Mrs. Pow- 
ell, who had risen, and was looking the 
picture of ladylike uneasiness and sym- 
pathy. “You knew that I was in the 
garden.” 

“ Yes, but I thought you had returned, 
my dear Mrs. Mellish,” said the ensign’s 
widow, busying herself with Aurora’s 
wet shawl, which she attempted to re- 
move, but which Mrs. Mellish plucked 
impatiently away from her. “ I saw you 
go out, certainly ; and I saw you leave 
the lawn in the direction of the north 
lodge ; but T thought you had returned 
some time since.” 

The color faded out of John Mellish’s 
face. 

“ The north lodge 1” he said. “ Have 
you been to the north lodge ?” 

“ I have been in the direction of the 


north lodge f Aurora answered, with a 
sneering emphasis upon the words. 
“ Your information is perfectly correct, 
Mrs. Powell, though I did not know 
you l¥id done me the honor of watching 
my actions.” 

Mr. Mellish did not appear to hear 
this. He looked from his wife to his 
wife’s companion with a half-bewildered 
expression, — an expression of newly- 
awakened doubt, of dim, struggling per- 
plexity, — that was very painful to see. 

“The north lodge!” he repeated; 
“ what were you doing at the north 
lodge, Aurora ?” 

“ Do you wish me to stand here in my 
w’et clothes while I tell you ?” asked Mrs. 
Mellish, her great black eyes blazing up 
with indignant pride. “ If you want an 
explanation for Mrs. Powell’s satisfac- 
tion, I can give it here ; if only for your 
own, it will do as well up-stairs.” 

She swept towards the door, trailing 
her wet shawl after her, but not less 
queenly, even in her dripping garments 
(Serairamide and Cleopatra may have 
been out in wet weather); but at the 
door she paused and looked- back at 
him. 

“ I shall want you to take me to Lon- 
don to-morrow, Mr. Mellish,” she said. 
Then with one haughty toss of her beau- 
tiful head, and one bright flash of her 
glorious eyes, which seemed to say, 
“ Slave, obey and tremble !” she disap- 
peared, leaving Mr. Mellish to follow 
her, meekly, wonderingly, fearfully ; with 
terrible doubts and anxieties creeping, 
like venomous living creatures, stealthily 
into his heart. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

MONEY MATTERS. 

Archibald Floyd was very lonely at 
Felden Woods without his daughter. 
He took no pleasure in the long draw- 
ing-room, or the billiard-room and li- 
brary, or the pleasant galleries, in which 
there were all manner of easy corners, 
with abutting bay-windows, damask- 
cushioned oaken benches, china vases as 
high as tables, all enlivened by the alter- 
nately sternly masculine and simpering- 


AURORA FLOYD. 


ly feminine faces of those ancestors whose 
painted representations the banker had 
bought in Wardour Street. (Indeed, I 
fear those Scottish warriors, those be- 
wigged w'orthies of the Northern Cir- 
cuit, those taper-waisted ladies with 
pointed stomachers, tucked-up petticoats, 
pannier-hoops, and blue-ribbon bedizen- 
ed crooks, had been painted to order, 
and that there were such items in the 
account of the Wardour- Street rococo 
merchant as, “ To one knight banneret, 
killed at Bosworth, 25Z. 5s.’’) The old 
banker, I say, grew sadly weary of his 
gorgeous mansion, wdiich was of little 
avail to him without Aurora. 

People are not so very much happier 
for living in handsome houses, though 
it is generally considered such a delight- 
ful thing to occupy a mansion which 
would be large enough for a hospiial, 
and take your simple meal at the end 
of a table long enough to accommodate 
a board of railway-directors. Archi- 
bald Floyd could not sit beside both 
the fireplaces in his long drawing-room, 
and he felt strangely lonely looking 
from the easy-chair on one hearth-rug, 
through a vista of velvet-pile and satin- 
damask, walnut-wood, buhl, malachite, 
china, parian, crystal, and ormolu, at 
that solitary second hearth-rug and those 
empty easy-chairs. He shivered in his 
dreary grandeur. His five-and-forty by 
thirty feet of velvet-pile might have been 
a patch of yellow sand in the great 
Sahara for any pleasure he derived from 
its occupation. The billiard-room, per- 
haps, was w'orse ; for the cues and balls 
were every one made precious by Au- 
rora’s touch; and there was a great 
fine-drawn seam upon the green cloth, 
which marked the spot where Miss 
Floyd had ripped it open at the time 
she made her first juvenile essay at bil- 
liards. 

The banker locked the doors of both 
these splendid apartments, and gave the 
keys to his housekeeper. 

“ Keep the rooms in order, Mrs. 
Richardson,” he said, “ and keep them 
thoroughly aired ; but I shall only use 
them when Mr. and Mrs. Mellish come 
to me.” 

And having shut up these haunted 
chambers, Mr. Floyd retired to that 
snug little study in which he kept his 
few relics of the sorrowful past. 


135 

It may be said that the Scottish 
banker was a very stupid old man, and 
that he might have invited the county 
families to his gorgeous mansion ; that 
he might have summoned his nephews 
and their wives, wdth all grand nephews 
and nieces appertaining, and might thus 
have made the place merry with the 
sound of fresh young voices, and the 
long corridors noisy with the patter of 
restless little feet. He might have lured 
literary and artistic celebrities to his 
lonely hearth-rug, and paraded the lions 
of the London season upon his velvet- 
pile. He might have entered the politi- 
cal arena, and have had himself nomi- 
nated for Beckenham, Croyden, or West 
Wickham. He might have done almost 
any thing ; for he had very nearly as 
much money as Aladdin, and could have 
carried dishes of uncut diamonds to the 
father of any princess whom he might 
take it into his head to marry. He 
might have done almost any thing^this 
ridiculous old banker ; yet he did^ no- 
thing but sit brooding over his lonely 
hearth — for he was old and feeble, and 
he sat by the fire even in the bright 
summer weather — thinking of the daugh- 
ter who was far away. 

He thanked God for her happy home, 
for her devoted husband, for her secure 
and honorable position ; and he would 
have given the last drop of his blood to 
obtain for her these advantages ; but he 
was, after all, only mortal, and he would 
rather have had her by his side. 

Why did ho not surround himself 
with society, as brisk Mrs. Alexander 
urged, when she found him looking pale 
and Care-worn ? 

Why ? Because society was not Au- 
rora. Because all the brighest hon- 
mots of all the literary celebrities who 
have ever walked this earth seemed dull 
to him when compared with his daugh- 
ter’s idlest babble. Literary lions I 
Political notabilities I Out upon them I 
When Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and 
Mr. Charles IMckens should call in Mr. 
Makepeace Thackeray and Mr. Wilkie 
Collins to assist them in writing a work, 
in fifteen volumes or so, about Aurora, 
the banker would be ready to offer them 
a handsome sura for the copyright. 
Until then, he cared very little for the 
best book in Mr. Mudie’s collection. 
When the members of the legislature 


136 


AURORA FLOYD. 


should brin^ their political knowledge 
to bear upon Aurora, Mr. Archibald 
Floyd would be happy to listen to 
them. In the interim, he would have 
yawned in Lord Palmerston’s face or 
turned his back upon Earl Russell. 

The banker had been a kind uncle, a 
good master, a warm friend, and a gene- 
rous patron ; but he had never loved 
any creature except his wife Eliza and 
the daughter she had left to his care. 
Life is not long enough to hold many 
such attachments as these ; and the 
people who love very intensely are apt 
to concentrate the full force of their 
affection upon one object. For twenty 
years this black-eyed girl had been the 
idol before which the old man had knelt ; 
and now that the divinity is taken away 
from him, he falls prostrate and desolate 
before the empty shrine. Heaven knows 
how bitterly this beloved child had 
made him suffer, how deeply she had 
plunged the reckless dagger to the very 
corf of his loving heart, and how freely, 
gladfully, tearfully, and hopefully he had 
forgiven her. But she had never atoned 
for the past. It is poor consolation 
which Lady Macbeth gives to her re- 
morseful husband when she tells him 
that “ what’s done cannot be undone 
but it is painfully and terribly true. 
Aurora could not restore the year which 
she had taken out of her father’s life, 
and which his anguish and despair had 
multiplied by ten. She could not re- 
store the equal balance of the mind 
which had once experienced a shock so 
dreadful as to shatter its serenity ; as 
we shatter the mechanism of a watch 
when we let it fall violently to the 
ground. The watchmaker patches up 
the damage, and gives us a new wheel 
here, and a spring there, and sets the 
hands going again ; but they never go 
so smoothly as when the watch was 
fresh from the hands of the maker, and 
they are apt to stop suddenly with no 
shadow of warning. Aurora could not 
atone. Whatever the nature of that 
girlish error which made the mystery of 
her life, it was not to be undone. She 
could more easily have baled the ocean 
dry with a soup-ladle — and I dare say 
she w'ould gladly have gone to work to 
spoon out the salt water, if by so doing 
she could have undone that bygone mis- 
chief. But she could not ; she could 


not. Her tears, her penitence, her af- 
fection, her respect, her devotion, could 
do much ; but they could not do this. 

The old banker invited Talbot Bui- 
strode and his young wife to make them- 
selves at home at Felden, and drive down 
to the Woods as freely as if the ]dace 
had been some country mansion of their 
own. They came sometimes, and Talbot 
entertained his great uncle-in-law with 
the troubles of the Cornish miners, while 
Lucy sat listening to her husband’s talk 
with unmitigated reverence and delight. 
Archibald Floyd made his guests very 
welcome upon these occasions,. and gave 
orders that the oldest and costliest wines 
in the cellar should be brought out for 
the captain’s entertainment; but some- 
times in the very middle of Talbot’s dis- 
courses upon political economy the old 
man would sigh wearily, and look with 
a dimly yearning gaze far away over the 
tree-tops in a northward direction, to- 
wards that distant Yorkshire household 
in which his daughter was the queen. 

Perhaps Mr. Floyd had never quite 
forgiven Talbot Bulstrode for the break- 
ing off of the match between him and 
Aurora. The banker had certainly of 
the two suitors preferred John Mellish ; 
but he would have considered it only 
correct if Captain Bulstrode had retired 
from the world upon the occasion of 
Aurora’s marriage, and broken his heart 
in foreign exile, rather than advertising 
his indifference by a union with poor 
little Lucy. Arcldbald looked wouder- 
ingly at his fair-haired niece as she sat 
before him in the deep bay-window, with 
the sunshine upon her amber tresses and 
the crisp fold of her peach-colored silk 
dress, looking for all the world like, one 
of the painted heroines so dear to the 
pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, and mar- 
velled how it was that Talbot could have 
come to admire her. She was very 
pretty, certainly, with pink cheeks, a 
white nose, and rose-colored nostrils, and 
a species of beauty which consists in very 
careful finishing-off and picking out of 
the features; but, oh, how tame, how 
cold, how weak, beside that Egyptian 
goddess, that Assyrian queen with the 
flashing eyes and the serpentine coils of 
purple-black hair 1 

Talbot Bulstrode was very calm, very 
quiet, but apparently sufficiently happy. 
I use that w'ord “ sufficiently” advisedly. 


AURORA 

It is a dangerous thing to be too happy. 
Your high-pressure happiness, your 
sixty-miles-au-hour enjoyment, is apt to 
burst up and come to a hard end. Better 
the quietest parliamentary train, which 
starts very early in the morning and car- 
ries its passengers safe into the terminus 
when the shades of night come down, 
than that rabid, rushing express, w'hich 
does the journey in a quarter of the time, 
but occasionally topples over a bank, or 
rides pickaback upon a luggage-train, in 
its fiery impetuosity. 

Talbot Bulstrode was substantially 
happier with Lucy than he ever could 
have been with Aurora. His fair young 
wife’s undemonstrative worship of him 
soothed and flattered him. Her gentle 
obedience, her entire concurrence in his 
every thought and whim, set his pride at 
rest. She was not eccentric; she was not 
impetuous. If he left her alone all day 
in the snug little house in Half-Moon 
Street which he had furnished before his 
marriage, he had no fear of her calling 
for her horse and scampering away into 
Rotten Row, with not so much as a 
groom to attend upon her. She was 
not strong-minded. She could be happy 
without the society of Newfoundlands 
and Skye terriers. She did not prefer 
Landseer’s dog-pictures above all other 
examples of modern art. She might 
have walked down Regent Street a hun- 
dred times without being once tempted 
to loiter upon the curb-stone and bar- 
gain with suspicious-looking merchants 
for a “noice leetle dawg.” She was al- 
together gentle and womanly, and Talbot 
had no fear to trust her to her own sweet 
w'ill, and no need to impress upon her 
the necessity of lending her feeble little 
hands to the mighty task of sustaining 
the dignity of the Raleigh Bulstrodes. 

She would cling to him sometimes, 
half-lovingly, half-timidly, and, looking 
up with a pretty deprecating smile into 
his coldly handsome face, ask him, fal- 
teringly, if he was really, really happy. 

“Yes, my darling girl,” the Cornish 
captain would answer, being very well 
accustomed to the question, “decidedly, 
very happy.” 

His calm business-like tone would 
rather disappoint poor Lucy, and she 
would vaguely wish that her husband had 
been a little more like the heroes in the 
High-Church novels, and a little less 


FLOYD. 137 

devoted to Adam Smith, McCulloch, 
and the Cornish mines. 

“ But you don’t love me as you loved 
Aurora, Talbot?” (There were profane 
people who corrupted the captain’s 
Christian name into “ Tal but Mrs. 
Bulstrode was not more likely to avail 
herself of that disrespectful abbreviation 
than she w’as to address her gracious 
sovereign as “ Yic.”) “But you don’t 
love me as you loved Aurora, Talbot 
dear ?” the pleasing voice would urge, 
so tenderly anxious to be contradicted. 

“Not as I loved Aurora, perhaps, 
darling.” 

“ Not as much ?” 

“ As much and better, my pet ; with 
a more enduring and a wiser love.” 

If this w'as a little bit of a fib when 
the captain first said it, is he to be ut- 
terly condemned for the falsehood ? 
How could he resist the loving blue eyes 
so ready to fill with tears if he had an- 
swered coldly ; the softly pensive voice, 
tremulous with emotion ; the earnest 
face ; the caressing hand laid so lightly 
upon his coat-collar ? He must have 
been more than mortal had he given any 
but loving answers to those loving ques- 
tions. The day soon came when his 
answers were no longer tinged with so 
much as the shadow of falsehood. His 
little wife crept stealthily, almost imper 
ceptily, into his heart ; and if he remem- 
bered the fever-dream of the past, it was 
only to rejoice in the tranquil security 
of ihe present. 

Talbot Bulstrode and his wife w^ere 
staying at Felden Woods for a few days 
during the burning July weather, and 
sat down to dinner with Mr. Floyd upon 
the day succeeding the night of the 
storm. They were disturbed in the very 
midst of that dinner by the unexpected 
arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Mellish, who 
rattled up to the door in a hired vehicle 
just as the second course was being 
placed upon the table. 

Archibald Floyd recognized the first 
murmur of his daughter’s voice, and ran 
out into the hall to welcome her. 

She showed no eagerness to throw 
herself into her father’s arms, but stood 
looking at John Mellish with a weary, 
absent expression, while the stalwart 
Yorkshireman allowed himself to be 
gradually disencumbered of a chaotic 
load of travelling-bags, sun-umbrellas, 


138 


AURORA FLOYD. 


shawls, magazines, newspapers, and over- 
coats. 

“ My darling, my darling !” exclaimed 
the banker, “ what a happy surprise, 
what an unexpected pleasure I” 

She did not answer him, but, with her 
arms about his neck, looked mournfully 
into his face. 

“ She would come,” said Mr. John 
Mellish, addressing himself generally ; 
“she would come. The doose knows 
why ! But she said she must come, and 
wdiat could I do but bring her ? If she 
asked me to take her to the moon, what 
could I do but take her? But she 
wouldn’t bring any luggage to speak of, 
because we’re going back to-morrow ?” 

“ Going back to-morrow I” repeated 
Mr. Floyd; “impossible.” 

“ Bless your heart I” cried John, 
“ what’s impossible to Lolly ? If she 
W’anted to go to the moon, she’d go, 
don’t I tell you ? She’d have a special 
engine, or a special balloon, or a special 
something or other, and she’d go. When 
we were in Paris she wanted to see the 
big fountains play ; and she told me to 
WTite to the emperor and ask him to 
have them set going for her. She did, 
by Jove !” 

Lucy Bulstrode came forward to bid 
her cousin welcome ; but I fear that a 
sharp jealous pang thrilled through that 
innocent heart at the thought that those 
fatal black eyes were again brought to 
bear upon Talbot’s life. 

Mrs. Mellish put her arms about her 
cousin as tenderly as if she had been em- 
bracing a child. 

“You here, dearest Lucy I” she said. 
“I am so very glad.” 

“He loves me,” whispered little Mrs. 
Bulstrode, “ and I never, never can tell 
you how good he is.” 

“ Of course not, my darling,” answered 
Aurora, drawing her cousin aside while 
Mr. Mellish shook hands with his father- 
in-law and Talbot Bulstrode. “ He is 
the most glorious of princes, the most 
perfect of saints, is he not? and you 
worship him all day ; you sing silent 
hymns in his praise, and perform high 
mass in his honor, and go about telling 
his virtues upon an imaginary rosary. 
Ah, Lucy, how many kinds of love there 
are ; atid who shall say which is the best 
or highest ? I see plain, blundering 
John Mellish yonder with unprejudiced 


eyes; I know his every fault, I laugh at 
his every awkwardness. Yes, I laugh 
now, for he is dropping those things faster 
than the servants can pick them up.” 

She stopped to point to poor John’s 
chaotic burden. 

“ I see all this as plainly as I see the 
deficiencies of the servant who stands 
behind my chair; and yet I love him 
with all my heart and soul, and I would 
not have one fault corrected, or one vir- 
tue exaggerated, for fear it should make 
him different to what he is.” 

Lucy Bulstrode gave a little half- 
resigned sigh. 

“ What a blessing that my poor cousin 
is happy,” she thought; “and yet how 
can she be otherwise than miserable 
with that absurd John Mellish?” 

What Lucy meant perhaps was this. 
How could Aurora be otherwise than 
wretched in the companionship of a gen- 
tleman who had neither a straight nose 
nor dark hair. Some women never 
outlive that school-girl infatuation for 
straight noses and dark hair. Some 
girls would have rejected Napoleon the 
Great because he wasn’t “ tall,” or would 
have turned up their noses at the author 
of Childe Harold if they had happened 
to see him in a stand-up collar. If 
Lord Byron had never turned down his 
collars, would his poetry have been as 
popular as it was ? If Mr. Alfred Ten- 
nyson were to cut his hair, would that 
operation modify our opinion of The 
Queen of the 3Iay? Where- does that 
marvellous power of association begin 
and end ? Perhaps there may have been 
a reason for Aurora’s contentment with 
her commonplace, prosaic husband. Per- 
haps she had learned at a very early pe- 
riod of her life that there are qualities 
even more valuable than exquisitely 
modeled features or clustering locks. 
Perhaps, having begun to be foolish 
very early, she had outstripped her co- 
temporaries in the race, and had early 
learned to be wise. 

Archibald Floyd led his daughter and 
her husband into the dining-room, and 
the dinner-party sat down again with 
the two unexpected guests, and the sec- 
ond course was served, and the luke- 
warm salmon brought in again for Mr. 
and Mrs. Mellish. 

Aurora sat in her old place on her 
father’s right hand. In the old girlish 


AURORA 

days Miss Floyd had never occupied the 
bottom of the table, but had loved best 
to sit close to that foolishly doting pa- 
rent, pouring out his wine for him in de- 
fiance of the servants, and doing other 
loving offices which were deliciously in- 
convenient to the old man. 

To-day A urora seemed especially affec- 
tionate. That fondly clinging manner 
had all its ancient charm to the banker. 
He put down his glass with a tremulous 
hand to gaze at his darling child, and 
was dazzled with her beauty, and drunken 
with the happiness of having her near 
him. 

“But, my darling,” he said, by and 
by, “what do yoii mean by talking about 
going back to Yorkshire to-morrow?” 

“Nothing, papa, except that I mud 
go,” answered Mrs. Mellish determin- 
edly. 

“ But why come, dear, if you could 
only stop one night ?” 

“ Because I wanted to see you, dearest 
father, and to talk to you about — about 
money matters.” 

“ That’s it !” exclaimed John Mellish, 
with his mouth half-full of salmon and 
lobster-sauce. “ That’s it I Money mat- 
ters 1 That’s all I can get out of her. 
She goes out late last night, and roams 
about the garden, and comes in wet 
through and through, and says she must 
come to London about money matters. 
What should she want with money mat- 
ters ? If she wants money, she can have 
as much as she wants. She shall write 
the figures, and I’ll sign the cheque ; or 
she shall have a dozen blank cheques to 
fill in just as she pleases. What is there 
upon this earth that I’d refuse her ? If 
she dipped a little too deep, and put 
more money than she could aflbrd upon 
the bay filly, why doesn’t she come to 
me instead of bothering you about 
money matters ? You know I said so in 
the train, Aurora, ever so many times. 
Why bother your poor papa about it ?” 

The poor papa looked wonderingly 
from his daughter to his daughter’s hus- 
band. What did it all mean ? Trou- 
ble, vexation, weariness of spirit, humil- 
iation, disgrace ? 

Ah, Heaven help that enfeebled mind 
whose strength has been shattered by 
one great shock. Archibald Floyd 
dreaded the token of a coming storm in 


FLOYD. 139 

every chance cloud on the summer’s 
sky. 

“ Perhaps I may prefer to spend my 
own money, Mr. John Mellish,” an- 
swered Aurora, “and pay any foolish 
bets I have chosen to make out of my 
own purse, without being under an obli- 
gation to any one.” 

Mr. Mellish returned to his salmon in 
silence. 

“ There is no occasion for a great 
mystery, papa,” resumed Aurora ; “ I 
wanted some money for a particular pur- 
pose, and I have come to consult with 
you about my affairs. . There is nothing 
very extraordinary in that, I suppose ?” 

Mrs. John Mellish tossed her head, 
and flung this sentence at the assembly, 
as if it had been a challenge. Her man- 
ner was so defiant, that even Talbot and 
Lucy felt called upon to respond with a 
gentle dissenting murmur. 

“ No, no, of course not ; nothing 
more natural,” muttered the captain ; 
but he was thinking all the time, “ Thank 
God I married the other one.” 

After dinner the little party strolled 
out of the drawing-room windows on to 
the lawn, and away towards that iron 
bridge upon which Aurora had stood, 
with her dog by her side, less than two 
years ago, on the occasion of Talbot 
Bulstrode’s second visit to Felden 
Woods. Lingering upon that bridge on 
this tranquil summer’s evening, what 
could the captain do but think of that 
September day, barely two years agone? 
Barely two years ! not two years I And 
how much had been done and thought 
and suffered since I How contemptible 
was the narrow space of time ! yet what 
terrible eternities of anguish, what cen- 
turies of heart-break, had been com- 
pressed into that pitiful sum of days and 
weeks! When the fraudulent partner 
in some house of business puts the 
money which is not his own ui)on a 
Derby favorite, and goes home at night 
a loser, it is strangely difficult for that 
wretched defaulter to believe that it is 
not twelve hours since he traveled the 
road to Epsom confident of success, and 
calculating how he should invest his 
winnings. Talbot Bulstrode was very 
silent, thinking of the influence which 
this family of Felden Woods had had 
upon his destiny. His little Lucy saw 


140 


AURORA FLOYD. 


that silence and thoughtfulness, and, 
stealing softly to her husband, linked 
her arm in his. She had a right to do 
it now. Yes, to pass her little soft white 
hand under his coat-sleeve, and even 
look up, almost boldly, in his face. 

“ Do you remember when you first 
came to Felden, and we stood upon this 
very bridge she asked ; for she too 
had been thinking of that far away time 
in the bright September of ’57. “ Do 

you remember, Talbot dear ?” 

She had drawn him away from the 
banker and his children, in order to ask 
this all-important, question. 

“Yes, perfectly, darling. As well as 
I remember your graceful figure seated 
at the piano in the long drawing-room, 
with the sunshine on your hair.’’ 

“ You remember that! you remember 
me exclaimed Lucy rapturously. 

“ Very well indeed.” 

“But I thought — that is, I know — 
that you were in love with Aurora, 
then.” 

“ I think not.” 

“ You only think not?” 

“ How can I tell I” cried Talbot. “ I 
freely confess that my first recollection 
connected with this place is of a gor- 
geous black-eyed creature, with scarlet in 
her hair ; and I can no more disassoci- 
ate her image from Felden Woods than 
I can, with my bare right hand, pluck 
up the trees which give the place its 
name. But if you entertain one distrust- 
ful thought of that pale shadow of the 
past, you do yourself and me a grievous 
wrong. I made a mistake,. Lucy ; but, 
thank Heaven, I saw it in time.” 

It is to be observed that Captain Bul- 
strode was always peculiarly demonstra- 
tive in his gratitude to Providence for 
his escape from the bonds which were 
to have united him to Aurora. He also 
made a great point of the benign com- 
passion in which he held John Mellish. 
But in despite of this, he was apt to be 
rather captious and quarrelsomely dis- 
posed towards the Yorkshireman ; and 
I doubt if John’s little stupidities and 
weaknesses were, on the whole, very dis- 
pleasing to him. There are some wounds 
which never quite heal. The jagged 
flesh may reunite ; cooling medicines 
may subdue the inflammation ; even the 
scar left by the dagger-thrust may wear 
away, until it disappears in that gradual 


transformation which every atom of us 
is supposed by physiologists to undergo ; 
but the wound has been, and to the last 
hour of our lives there are unfavorable 
winds which can make us wince with the 
old pain. 

Aurora treated her cousin’s husband 
with the calm cordiality which she might 
have felt for a brother. She bore no 
grudge against him for the old deser- 
tion ; for she was happy wuth her hus- 
band. She w’as happy w’ith the man 
who loved and believed in her, surviv- 
ing every trial of his simple faith. Mrs. 
Mellish and Lucy wandered away among 
the flower-beds by the water-side, leav- 
ing the gentlemen on the bridge. 

“ So you are very, very happy, my 
Lucy,” said Aurora. 

“ Oh, yes, yes, dear. How could I 
be otherwise. Talbot is so good to me. 
I know, of course, that he loved you 
first, and that he doesn’t love me quite 
— in the same way, you know — per- 
haps, in fact — not as much.” Lucy Bul- 
strode was never tired of harping on 
this unfortunate minor string. “ But I 
am very happy. You must come and 
see us, Aurora dear. Our house is so 
pretty I” 

Mrs. Bulstrode hereupon entered 
into a detailed description of the furni- 
ture and decorsrtions in Half-Moon 
street, which is perhaps scarcely worthy 
of record. Aurora listened rather ab- 
sently to the long catalogue of uphol- 
stery, and yawned several times before 
her cousin had finished. 

“ It’s a very pretty house, I dare say, 
Lucy,” she said at last, “ and John and 
I will be very glad to come and see you 
some day. I wander, Lucy, if I were 
to come in any trouble or disgrace to 
your door, whether you would turn me 
aw'ay.” 

“ Trouble ! disgrace {’’repeated Lucy, 
looking frightened. 

“You wouldn’t turn me away, Lucy, 
would you ? No ; I know you better 
than that. You’d let me in secretly, 
and hide me away in one of the servants’ 
bedrooms,' and bring me food by stealth, 
for fear the captain should discover the 
forbidden guest beneath his roof. You’d 
serve two masters, Lucy, in fear and 
trembling.” 

Before Mrs. Bulstrode could make 
any answer to this extraordinary speech 


AURORA FLOYD. 


141 


the approach of the gentlemen inter- 
rupted the feminine conference. 

It was scarcely a lively evening, this 
July sunset at Felden Woods. Archi- 
bald Floyd’s gladness in his daughter’s 
presence was something damped by the 
peculiarity of her visit; John Mellish 
had some shadowy remnants of the pre- 
vious night’s disquietude hanging about 
him ; Talbot Bulstrode was thoughtful 
and moody ; and poor little Lucy was 
tortured by vague fears of her brilliant 
cousin’s influence. I don’t suppose that 
any member of that “ attenuated” assem- 
bly felt very much regret when the great 
clock in the stableyard struck eleven, 
and the jingling bedroom candlesticks 
were brought into the room. 

Talbot and his wife were the first to 
say good-night. Aurora lingered at her 
father’s side, and John Mellish looked 
doubtfully at his dashing white sergeant, 
waiting to receive the word of com- 
mand. 

“ You may go, John,” she said ; “ I 
want to speak to papa.” 

“ But I can wait, Lolly.” 

“ On no account,” answered Mrs. 
Mellish sharply. “ I am going into 
papa’s study to have quite a confabula- 
tion with him. What end would be 
gained by your waiting ? You’ve been 
yawning in our faces all the evening. 
You’re tired to death, I know, John; 
so go at once, my precious pet, and 
leave papa and me to discuss our money 
matters.” She pouted her rosy lips, 
and stood upon tiptoe, while the big 
Y^orkshireman kissed her. 

“ How you do henpeck me, Lolly !” 
he said rather sheepishly. “ Good night, 
sir. God bless you I Take care of my 
darling.” 

He shook hands with Mr. Floyd, 
parting from him with that half-afifec- 
tionate, half-reverent manner which he 
always displayed to Aurora’s father. 
Mrs. Mellish stood for some moments 
silent and motionless, looking after her 
husband ; while her father, watching 
her looks, tried to read their meaning. 

How quiet are the tragedies of real 
life I That dreadful scene between the 
Moor and his Ancient takes place in 
the open street of Cyprus. According 
to modern usage, I cannot fancy Othello 
and lago debating about poor Desde- ^ 
mona’s honesty in St. Paul’s Church- 


yard, or even in the market-place of a 
country town ; but perhaps the Cyprus 
street was a 'dull one, a cul-de-sac, \t 
may be, or at least a deserted thorough- 
fare, something like that in which Mon- 
sieur Melnotte falls upon the shoulder 
of General Damas and sobs out his la- 
mentations. But our modern tragedies 
seem to occur in-doors, and in places 
where we should least look for scenes 
of horror. Even while I write this the 
London flaneurs are starng all agape 
at a shop-window in a crowded street, 
as if every pitiful feather, every poor 
shred of ribbon, in that milliner’s win- 
dow, had a mystical association with the 
terrors of a room up-stairs. But to the 
ignorant passers-by how commonplace 
the spot must seem ; how remote in its 
every-day associations from the terrors 
of life’s tragedy 1 

Any chance traveller driving from 
Beckenham to West Wickham would 
have looked, perhaps, enviously, at the 
Felden mansion, and sighed to be lord 
of that fair expanse of park and garden ; 
yet I doubt if in the county of Kent 
there was any creature more disturbed 
in mind than Archibald Floyd the 
banker. Those few moments during 
which Aurora stood in thoughtful si- 
lence were as so many hours to his anx- 
ious mind. At last she spoke. 

“ Will you come to the study, papa?” 
she said; “this room is so big, and so 
dimly lighted. I always fancy there are 
listeners in the corners.” 

She did not wait for an answer ; but 
led the way to a room upon the other 
side of the hall, — the room in which she 
and her father had been so long closeted 
together upon the night before her de- 
parture for Paris. The crayon portrait 
of Eliza Floyd looked down upon Archi- 
bald and his daughter. The face wore 
so bright and genial a smile that it was 
difficult to believe it was the face of the 
dead. 

The banker was the first to speak. 

“ My darling girl,” he said, “ what is 
it you want of me ?” 

'' Money, papa. Two , thousand 
pounds.” 

She checked his gesture of surprise, 
and resumed before he could interrupt 
her. 

I “The money you settled upon me on 
my marriage with John Mellish is in- 


142 


AURORA FLOYD. 


vested in our own bank, I know. I know, 
* too, that I can draw upon my account 
when and how I please ; but I thought 
that if I wrote a cheque for two thou- 
sand pounds, the unusual amount might 
attract attention, — and it might possibly 
fall into your hands. Had this occurred, 
you would perhaps have been alarmed, 
at any rate astonished. I thought it 
best, therefore, to come to you myself 
and ask you for the money, especially as 
I must have it in notes.” 

Archibald Floyd grew very pale. He 
had been standing while Aurora spoke; 
Uut as she finished, he dropped into a 
chair near his little office-table, and rest- 
ing his elbow upon an open desk, leaned 
his head on his hand. 

“ What do you want the money for, 
my dear ?” he asked, gravely. 

“Never mind what, papa. It is my 
own money, is it not, and I may spend 
it as I please 

“ Certainly, my dear, certainly,” he 
answered, with some slight hesitation. 
“ You shall spend whatever you please. 
I am rich enough to indulge any whim 
of yours, however foolish, however ex- 
travagant. But your marriage settle- 
ment was rather intended for the benefit 
of your children — than — than for — any 
thing of this kind, and I scarcely know 
if you are justified in touching it with- 
out your husband’s permission ; espe- 
cially as your pin-money is really large 
enough to enable you to gratify any 
reasonable wish.” 

The old man pushed his gi^ay hair 
away from his forehead with a weary 
action and a tremulous hand. Heaven 
knows that even in that desperate mo- 
ment Aurora took notice of the feeble 
hand and the whitening hair. 

“ Give me the money, then, papa,” she 
said. “ Give it me from your own purse. 
You are rich enough to do that.” 

“ Rich enough I Yes, if it were twenty 
times the sum,” answered the banker, 
slowly. Then, with a sudden burst of 
passion, he exclaimed, “0 Aurora, Au- 
rora, why do you treat me so badly ? 
Have I been so cruel a father that you 
can’t confide in me ? Aurora, why do 
you want this money ?” 

She clasped her hands tightly together, 
and stood looking at him for a few mo- 
ments irresolutely. 

“I cannot tell you,” she said, with 


grave determination. “ If I were to tell 
you — what — what I think of doing, you 
might thwart me in my purpose. Father 1 
father I” she cried, with a sudden change 
in her voice and manner, “ I am hemmed 
in on every side by difficulty and danger; 
and there is only one way of escape — 
except death. Unless Ij;ake that one 
way, I must die. I am very young, — 
too young and happy, perhaps, to die 
willingly. Give me the means of escape.” 

“ You mean this sum of money ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“You have been pestered by some 
connection — some old associate of — 
his ?” 

“No I” 

“What then ?” 

“ I cannot tell you.” 

They were silent for some moments. 
Archibald Floyd looked imploringly at 
his child, but she did not answer that 
earnest gaze. She stood before him with 
a proudly downcast look ; the eyelids 
drooping over the dark eyes, not in 
shame, not in humiliation ; only in the 
stern determination to avoid being sub- 
dued by the sight of her father’s distress. 

“Aurora,” he said at last, “why not 
take the wisest and the safest step ? 
Why not tell John Hellish the truth ? 
The danger would disappear ; the diffi- 
culty would be overcome. If you are 
persecuted by this low rabble, who so fit 
as he to act for you ? Tell him, Aurora 
—tell him all I” 

“ No, no, no I” 

She lifted her hands, and clasped 
them upon her pale face. 

“ No, no ; not for all this wide world !” 
she cried. 

“ Aurora,” said Archibald Floyd, wdtb 
a gathering sternness upon his face, 
which overspread the old man’s benevo- 
lent countenance like some dark cloud, 
— “ Aurora, — God forgive me for saying 
such words to my own child, — but I must 
insist upon your telling me that this is 
no new infatuation, no new madness, 
which leads you to — ” He was unable 
to finish his sentence. 

Mrs. Hellish dropped her hands from 
before her face, and looked at him with 
her eyes flashing fire, and her cheeks in 
a crimson blaze. 

“Father,” she cried, “how dare you 
ask me such a question ? New infatua- 
tion I New madness 1 Have I suffered 


* AURORA 

so little, do you think, from the folly of 
my youth ? Have I paid so small a price 
for the mistake of my girlhood that you 
should have cause to say these words to 
me to-night ? Do I come of so bad a 
race,” she said, pointing indignantly to 
her mother’s portrait, “ that you should 
think so vilely of me ? Do I — ” 

Her tragical appeal was rising to its 
climax, when she dropped suddenly at 
her father’s feet, and burst into a tem- 
pest of sobs. 

“ Papa, papa, pity me,” she cried ; 
“ pity me I” 

He raised her in his arms, and drew 
her to him, and comforted her, as he 
had comforted her for the loss of a 
Scotch terrier-pup twelve years before, 
when she was small enough to sit on 
his knee, and nestle her head in his 
waistcoat 

“Pity you, my dearl” he said. 
“What is there I would not do for you 
to save you one moment’s sorrow. If 
my worthless life could help you ; if — ” 

“You will give me the money, papa ?” 
she asked, looking up at him lialf-coax- 
ingly through her tears. 

“Yes, ray darling ; to-morrow morn- 
iiig.” 

“ In bank-notes ?” 

“ In any manner you please. But, 
Aurora, why see these people? Why 
listen to their disgraceful demands ? 
Why not tell the truth ?” 

“Ah, why, indeed I” she said thought- 
fully. “Ask me no questions, dear 
papa ; but let me have the money to- 
morrow, and I promise you that this 
shall be the very last you hear of my old 
troubles.” 

She made this promise with such per- 
fect confidence that her father was in- 
spired with a faint ray of hope. 

“ Come, darling papa,” she said, 
“ your room is near mine ; let us go up- 
stairs together.” 

She entwined her arm in his, and led 
him up the broad staircase ; only part- 
ing from him at the door of his room. 

Mr. Floyd summoned his daughter 
into the study early the next morning, 
while Talbot Bulstrode was opening his 
letters, and Lucy strolling up and down 
the terrace with John Mellish. 

“ I have telegraphed for the money, 
my darling,” the banker said. “ Oue 


FLOYD. 143 

of the clerks will be here with it by the 
time we have finished breakfast.” 

Mr. Floyd was right. A card in- 
scribed with the name of a Mr. George 
Martin was brought to him during 
breakfast. 

“ Mr. Martin will be good enough to 
wait in my study,” he said. 

Aurora and her father found the clerk 
seated at the open window, looking ad- 
miringly through festoons of foliage, 
which clustered round the frame of the 
lattice, into the richly cultivated garden. 
Felden Woods was a sacred spot in the 
eyes of the junior clerks in Lombard 
Street, and a drive to Beckenham in a 
Hansom cab on a fine summer’s morn- 
ing, to say nothing of such chance re- 
freshment as pound-cake and old Ma- 
deira, or cold fowl and Scotch ale, was 
considered no small treat. 

Mr. George Martin, who was labor- 
ing under the temporary affliction of 
being only nineteen years of age, rose in 
a confused flutter of respect and sur- 
prise, and blushed very violently at 
sight of Mrs. Mellish. 

Aurora responded to his reverential 
salute with such a pleasant nod as she 
might have bestowed upon the younger 
dogs in the stable-yard, and seated her- 
self opposite to him at the little table 
by the window. It was such an excru- 
ciatingly narrow table that Aurora’s 
muslin dress rustled against the drab 
trousers of the junior clerk as Mrs. Mel- 
lish sat down. 

The young man unlocked a little mo- 
rocco pouch which he wore suspended 
from a strap across his shoulder, and 
produced a roll of crisp notes ; so crisp, 
so white and new, that, in their unsul- 
lied freshness, they looked more like 
notes on the Bank of Elegance than the 
circulating medium of this busy, money- 
making nation. 

“ I have brought the cash for which 
you telegraphed, sir,” said the clerk. 

“Very good, Mr. Martin,” answered 
the banker. “ Here is my cheque ready 
written for you. The notes are — ?” 

“Twenty fifties, twenty-five twenties, 
fifty tens,” the clerk said glibly. 

Mr. Floyd took the little bundle of 
tissue-paper, and counted the notes with 
the professional rapidity which he still 
retained. 


144 


AURORA FLOYD. 


“Quite correct,” he said, ringing the 
bell, which was speedily answered by a 
simpering footman. “ Give this gentle- 
man some lunch. You wdll find the 
Madeira very good,” he added kindly, 
turning to the blushing junior; “it’s a 
wine that is dying out, and by the time 
you’re my age, Mr. Martin, you won’t 
be able to get such a glass as I can offer 
you to-day. Good morning.” 

% Mr. George Martin clutched his hat 
nervously from the empty chair on which 
he had placed it, knocked down a heap 
of papers with his elbow, bowed, blush- 
ed, and stumbled out of the room, under 
convoy of the simpering footman, who 
nourished a profound contempt for the 
young men from the h’office. 

“Now, my darling,” said Mr. Floyd, 
“here is the money. Though, mind, I 
protest against — ” 

“ No, no, papa, not a word,” she in- 
terrupted ; “ I thought that was all 
settled last night.” 

He sighed, with the same weary sigh 
as on the night before, and seating him- 
self at his desk, dipped a pen into the 
ink. 

“What are you going to do, papa?’^ 

“ I’m only going to take the numbers 
of the notes.” 

“ There is no occasion.” 

“ There is always occasion to be 
business-like,” said the old man firmly, 
as he checked the numbers of the notes 
one by one upon a sheet of paper with 
rapid precision. 

Aurora paced up and down the room 
impatiently while this operation w'as 
going forward. 

“ How difficult it has been to me to 
get this money I” she exclaimed. “ If 
I had been the wife and daughter of 
two of the poorest men in Christendom, 
I could scarcely have had more trouble 
about this two thousand pounds. And 
now you keep me here while you num- 
ber the notes, not one of which is likely 
to be exchanged in this country.” 

“I learnt to be business-like when I 
was very young, Aurora,” answered Mr. 
Floyd, “and I have never been able to 
forget my old habits.” 

He completed his task in defiance of 
his daughter’s impatience, and handed 
her the packet of notes when he had 
done. 

“ I will keep the list of numbers, my 


dear,” he said. “ If I were to give it 
to you, you would most likely lose it.” 

He folded the sheet of paper and put 
it in a drawer of his desk. 

“Twenty years hence, Aurora,” he ^ 
said, “should I live so long, I should 
be able to produce this paper, if it were 
wanted.” 

“ Which it never will be, you dear 
methodical papa,” answered Aurora. 

“ My troubles are ended now. Yes,” 
she added, in a graver tone, “I pray 
God that my troubles may be ended 
now.” 

She encircled her arms about her 
father’s neck, and kissed him tenderly. 

“I must leave you, dearest, to-day,’^ 
she said ; “you must not ask me why — 
you must ask me nothing! You must 
only love and trust me — as my poor 
John trusts me — faithfully, hopefully, 
through every thing.” 


CHAPTER XX. 

CAPTAIN PRODDER. 

While the Doncaster express was 
carrying Mr. and Mrs. Mellish north- 
wards, another express journeyed from 
Liverpool to London with its load of 
passengers. 

Amongst these passengers there was 
a certain broad-shouldered and rather 
bull-necked individual, who attracted 
considerable attention during the journey, 
and was an object of some interest to 
his fellow-travellers and the railway offi- 
cials at the two or three stations where 
the train stopped. 

He was a man of about fifty years of 
age, but his years were worn very lightly, 
and only recorded by some wandering 
streaks and patches of gray amongst 
his thick blue-black stubble of hair. 
His complexion, naturally dark, had be- 
come of such a bronzed and coppery 
tint by perpetual exposure to meridian 
suns, tropical hot winds, the fiery breath 
pf the simoom, and the many other tri- 
fling inconveniences attendant upon an 
out-door life, as to cause him to be fre- 
quently mistaken for the inhabitant of 
some one of those countries in which 
; the complexion of the natives fluctuates 


AURORA FLOYD. 


between burnt sienna, Indian red, and 
Yandyke brown. But itwas rarely long 
before he took an opportunity to rectify 
this mistake, and to express that hearty 
contempt and aversion for all furriners 
which is natural to the unspoiled and 
unsophisticated Briton.- . 

Upon this particular occasion he had 
not been half an hour in the society of 
his fellow-passengers before he had in- 
formed them that he was a native of Liver- 
pool, and the captain of a merchant- 
vessel trading, in a manner of speaking, 
he said, every where ; that he had run 
away from his father and his home at a 
very early period of his life, and had 
shifted for himself in different parts of 
the globe ever since ; that his Christian 
name was Samuel and his surname 
Prodder, and that his father had been, 
like himself, a captain in the merchant 
service. He chewed so much tobacco 
and drank so much fiery Jamaica rum 
from a pocket-pistol in the intervals of 
his conversation, that the first-class 
compartment in which he sat was odor- 
ous with the compound perfume. But 
he was such a hearty, loud-spoken fellow, 
and there was such a pleasant twinkle in 
his black eyes, that the passengers (with 
the exception of one crusty old lady) 
treated him with great good-humor, and 
listened very patiently to his talk. 

“ Chewin’ ain’t smokin’, you know, is 
it ?” he said, with a great guffaw, as he 
cut himself a terrible block of Caven- 
dish ; “and railway companies ain’t got 
any laws against that. They can put a 
fellow’s pipe out, but he can chew his 
quid in their faces ; though I won’t say 
which is wust for their carpets, neither.” 

I am sorry to be compelled to confess 
that this brown-visaged merchant-cap- 
tain, who said wud and chewed Caven- 
dish tobacco, was uncle to Mrs. John 
Mellish, of Hellish Park;^ and that the 
motive for this very journey was neither 
more nor less than his desire to become 
acquainted with his niece. 

He imparted this fact— as well as 
much other information relating to him- 
self, his tastes, habits, adventures, opin- 
ions, and sentiments — to his travelling 
companions in the course of the journey. 

“ Do you know for why I’m going to 
London by this identical train ?” he 
asked generally, as the passengers set- 
9 


145 

tied themselves into their places after 
taking refreshment at Rugby. 

The gentlemen looked over their 
newspapers at the talkative sailor, and a 
young lady looked up from her book ; 
but nobody volunteered to speculate an 
opinion upon the mainspring of Mr. 
Prodder’s actions. 

“ I’ll tell you for why,” resumed the 
merchant-captain, addressing the assem- 
bly as if in answer to their eager ques- 
tioning. “ I’m going to see my niece, 
which I have never seen before. When 
I ran away from father’s ship, the Ven- 
turesome, nigh upon forty year ago, and 
went aboard the craft of a captain by 
the name of Mobley, which was a good 
master to me for many a day, I had a 
little sister as I had left behind at Liver- 
pool, which was dearer to me than my 
life.” He paused to refresh himself with 
rather a demonstrative sip from the 
pocket-pistol. “But if ^/ow,” he con- 
tinued generally, “if you had a father 
that’d fetch you a clout of the head as 
soon as look at you, you'd run away per- 
haps; and so did I. I took the oppor- 
tunity to be missin’ one night as father 
was settin’ sail from Yarmouth Harbor; 
and not settin’ that wonderful store by 
me which some folks do by their only 
sons, he shipped his anchor without 
stopp'in’ to ask many questions, and left 
me hidin’ in one of the little alleys 
which cut the town of Yarmouth tbro>ugh 
and across like they cut the cakes they 
make there. There was many in Yar- 
mouth that knew me, and there wasn’t 
one that didn’t say, ‘ Sarve him right,’ 
when they heard how I’d given father 
the slip; and the next day Cap’en Mob- 
ley gave me a berth as cabin-boy aboard 
the Mariar Anne." 

Mr. Prodder again paused to partake 
of refreshment from his portable spirit- 
store, and this time politely handed the 
pocket-pistol to the company. 

“ Now perhaps you’ll not believe me,” 
he resumed, after his friendly offer had 
been refused, and the wicker-covered 
vessel replaced in his capacious pocket, 
— “ you won’t perhaps believe me when 
I tell you, as I tell you candid; that up 
to last Saturday week I never could find 
the time nor the opportunity to go back 
to Liverpool, and ask after the little sis- 
ter that I’d left no higher than the 


146 


ATTRORA FLOYD. 


kitchen-table, and that had cried fit to 
break her poor little heart when I went 
away. But whether you believe it or 
whether you don’t, it’s as true as gos- 
pel,” cried the sailor, thumping his pon- 
derous fist upon the padded elbow of the 
compartment in which he sat; “it’s as 
true as gospel. I’ve coasted America, 
North and South, I’ve carried West- 
Indian goods to the East Indies, and 
East-Indian goods to the West Indies. 
I’ve traded in Norwegian goods between 
Norway and Hull. I’ve carried Shef- 
field goods from Hull to South America. 
I’ve traded between all manner of coun- 
tries and all manner of docks; but some- 
how or other I’ve never had the time to 
spare to go on shore at Liverpool, and 
find out the narrow little street in which 
I left my sister Eliza, no higher than the 
table, more than forty years ago, until 
last Saturday was a week. Last Satur- 
day was a week I touched at Liverpool 
with a cargo of furs and poll-parrots, — 
what you may call fancy goods ; and I 
said to my mate, I said, ‘ I’ll tell you 
what I’ll do, Jack ; I’ll go ashore and 
see ray little sister Eliza.’ ” 

He paused once more, and a softening 
change came over the brightness of his 
black eyes. This time he did not apply 
himself to the pocket-pistol. This time 
he brushed the back of his brown* hand 
across his eyelashes, and brought it away 
with a drop or two of moisture glitter- 
ing upon the bronzed skin. Even his 
voice was changed when he continued, 
and had mellowed to a richer and more 
mournful depth, until it very much re- 
sembled the melodious utterance which 
twenty-one years before had assisted to 
render Miss Eliza Percival the popular 
tragedian of the Preston and Bradford 
circuit. 

“God forgive me,” continued the sai- 
lor, in that altered voice ; “but through- 
out my voyages I’d never thought of ray 
sister Eliza but in two ways; sometimes 
one, sometimes t’other. One way of 
thinking of her, and expecting to see 
her, was as the little sister that I’d left, 
not altered by so much as one lock of 
her hair being changed from the identical 
curl into which it was twisted the morn- 
ing she cried and clung about me on 
board the Venturesome, having come 
aboard to wish father and me good-by. 
Perhaps I oftenest thought of her in this 


way. Any how, it was in this way, and 
no other, that I always saw her in my 
dreams. The other way of thinking of 
her, and expectin’ to see her, was as a 
handsome, full-grown, buxom, married 
woman, with a troop of saucy children 
hanging on to her apron-string, and every 
one of ’em askin’ what Uncle Samuel 
had brought ’em from foreign parts. Of 
course this fancy was the most rational 
of the two ; but the other fancy, of the 
little child with the long black curly 
hair, would come to me very often, es- 
pecially at night when all was quiet 
aboard, and when I took the wheel in a 
spell while the helmsman turned in. 
Lord bless you, ladies and gentlemen, 
many a time of a starlight night, when 
we’ve been in them latitudes where the 
stars are brighter than common, I’ve 
seen the floating mists upon the water 
take the very shape of that light figure 
of a little girl in a white pinafore, and 
come skipping towards me across the 
waves. I don’t mean that I’ve seen a 
ghost, you know ; but I mean that I 
could have seen one if I’d had the mind, 
and that I’ve seen as much of a one as 
folks ever do see upon this earth : the 
ghosts of their own memories and their 
own sorrows, mixed up with the mists 
of the sea or the shadows of the trees 
wavin’ back’ards and for’ards in the 
moonlight, or a white curtain agen a 
window, or something of that sort. Well, 
I was such a precious old fool with these 
fancies and fantigs,” — Mr. Samuel Prod- 
der seemed rather to pride himself upon 
the latter word, as something out of the 
common, — “that when I went ashore 
at Liverpool, last Saturday was a week, 
I couldn’t keep my eyes off the little 
girls in white pinafores as passed me by 
in the streets, thinkin’ to see my Eliza 
skippin’ along, with her black curls flyin’ 
in the wind, and a bit of chalk, to play 
hop-scotch with, in her hand ; so I was 
obliged to say to myself, quite serious, 

‘ Now, Samuel Prodder, the little girl 
you’re a lookin’ for must be fifty years 
of age, if she’s a day, and it’s more than 
likely that she’s left off playin’ hop- 
scotch and wearin’ white pinafores by 
this time.’ If I hadn’t kept repeatin’ 
this, internally like, all the way I went, 
I should have stopped half the little 
girls in Liverpool to ask ’em if their 
name was Eliza, and if they’d ever had 


AURORA FLOYD, 


a brother as ran away and was lost. I 
had only one thought of how to set about 
findin’ her, and that was to walk straight 
to the back street in which I remembered 
leavin’ her forty years before. I’d no 
thought that those forty years could 
make any more change than to change 
her from a girl to a woman, and it 
seemed almost strange to me that they 
could make as much change as that. 
Tliere was one thing I never thought of; 
and if my heart beat loud and quick 
j when I knocked at the little front-door 
i of the very identical house in which we’d 
t lodged, it was with nothing but hope 
and joy. The forty years that had sent 
railways spinning all over England 
hadn’t made much difference in the old 
house; it was forty years dirtier, per- 
haps, and forty years shabbier, and it 
stood in the very heart of the town in- 
stead of on the edge of the open country ; 
but, exceptin’ that, it was pretty much 
the same ; and I expected to see the 
same landlady come to open the door, 
with the same dirty artificial flowers in 
her cap, and the same old slippers down 
at heel scrapin’ after her along the bit 
of oilcloth. It gave me a kind of a 
turn when I didn’t see this identical 
landlady, though she’d have been turned 
a hundred years old if she’d been alive ; 
and I might have prepared myself for 
the disappointment if I’d thought of 
that, but I hadn’t; and when the door 
was opened by a young woman with 
sandy hair, brushed backwards as if she’d 
been a Chinese, and no eyebrows to 
speak of, I did feel disappointed. The 
young woman had a baby in her arms, 
a black-eyed baby, with its eyes opened 
so wide that it seemed as if it had been 
very much surprised with the look of 
things on first coinin’ into the world, 
and hadn’t quite recovered itself yet; so 
I thought to myself, as soon as I clapped 
eyes on the little one, why, as sure as a 
gun, that’s my sister Eliza’s baby ; and 
my sister Eliza’s married, and lives here 
still. But the young woman had never 
heard the name of Prodder, and didn’t 
think there was any body in the neigh- 
borhood as ever had. I felt my heart, 
which had been beatin’ louder and 
quicker every minute, stop all of a sud- 
den when she said this, and seem to drop 
down like a dead weight; but I thanked 
her for her civil answers to my questions, 


147 

and went on to the next house to in- 
quire there. I might have saved myself 
the trouble, for I made the same inqui- 
ries at every house on each side of the 
street, going straight from door to door, 
till the people thought I was' a sea-farin’ 
tax-gatherer; but nobody had never 
heard the name of Prodder, and the 
oldest inhabitant in the street hadn’t 
lived there ten years. I was quite dis- 
heartened when I left the neighborhood, 
which had once been so familiar, and 
which seemed so strange and small and 
mean and shabby now. I’d had so little 
thought of failing to find Eliza in the 
very house in which I’d left her, that I’d 
made no plans beyond. So I was 
brought to a dead stop; and' I went 
back to the tavern where I’d left my 
carpet-bag, and I had a chop brought 
me for my dinner, and I sat with my 
knife and fork before me thinkin’ what I 
was to do next. When Eliza and I had 
parted forty years before, I remembered 
father leavin’ her in charge of a sister 
of my mother’s (my poor mother had 
been dead a year), and I thought to my- 
self, the only chance there is left for me 
now is to find Aunt Sarah.” 

By the time Mr. Prodder arrived at 
this stage of his narrative his listeners 
had dropped otf gradually, the gentle- 
men returning to their newspapers, and 
the young lady to her book, until the 
merchant-captain .found himself reduced 
to communicate his adventures to one 
good-natured looking young fellow, who 
seemed interested in the brown-faced 
sailor, and encouraged him every now 
and then with an assenting nod or a 
friendly “Ay, ay, to be sure.” 

“The only chance I can see, ses I,” 
continued Mr. Prodder, “is to find Aunt 
Sarah. I found Aunt Sarah. She’d 
been keeping a shop in the general line 
when I went away forty years ago, and 
she was keepiii’ the same shop in the 
general line when I came back last Sat- 
urday week ; and' there was the same 
flyblown handbills of ships that was to 
sail immediate, and that had sailed two 
year ago, accordin’ to the date upon the 
bills ; and the same wooden sugar-loaves 
wrapped up in white paper; and the 
same lattice-work gate, with a bell that 
rang as loud as if it was meant to give 
the alarm to all Liverpool as well as to 
my Aunt Sarah in the parlor behind the 


148 


AURORA FLOYD. 


shop. The poor old soul was standing 
behind the counter, serving two ounces 
of tea to a customer, when I went in. 
Forty years had made so much change 
in her, that I shouldn’t have known her 
if I hadn’t known the shop. She wore 
black curls upon her forehead, and a 
brooch like a brass butterfly in the mid- 
dle of the curls, where the parting ought 
to have been, and she wore a beard ; 
and the curls were false, but the beard 
wasn’t ; and her voice was very deep, and 
rather manly, and she seemed to me to 
have grown manly altogether in the forty 
years that I’d been away. She tied up 
the two ounces of tea, and then asked 
me what I pleased to want. I told her 
that I was little Sam, and that ! wanted 
my sister Eliza.” 

The merchant-captain paused, and 
looked out of the window for upwards 
of five minutes before he resumed his 
story. When he did resume it, he spoke 
in a very low voice, and in short detached 
sentences, as if he couldn’t trust himself 
with long ones for fear he should break 
down in the middle of them. 

“ Eliza had been dead one-and-twenty 
years. Aunt Sarah told me all about it. 
She’d tried the artificial flower-makin’; 
and she hadn’t liked it. And she’d 
turned play-actress. And when she was 
iiine-and-twenty, she’d married ; she’d 
married a gentleman that had no end of 
money ; and she’d gone to live at a fine 
place somewheres in Kent. I’ve got the 
name of it wrote down in my memoran- 
dum-book. But she’d been a good and 
generous friend to Aunt Sarah ; and 
Aunt Sarah was to have gone to Kent 
to see her, and to stop all the summer 
with her. But while Aunt was getting 
ready to go for that very visit, my sister 
Eliza died, leaving a daughter behind 
her, which is the niece that I’m goin’ to 
see. I sat down upon the three-legged 
wooden stool against the counter, and 
hid my face in my hands ; and I thought 
of the little girl that I’d seen playin’ at 
hop-scotch forty years before, until I 
thought my heart would burst ; but I 
didn’t shed a tear. Aunt Sarah took a 
big brooch out of her collar, and showed 
me a ring of black hair behind a bit of 
glass, with a gold frame round it. ‘ Mr. 
Floyd had this brooch made a purpose 
for me,’ she said; ‘he has always been a 
liberal gentleman to me, and he comes 


down to Liverpool once in two or three 
years, and takes tea with me in yon back- 
parlor; and I’ve no call to keep a shop, 
for he allows me a handsome income ; 
but I should die of the mopes if it wasn’t 
for the business.’ There was Eliza’s 
name and the date of her death en- 
graved upon the back of the brooch. I 
tried to remember where I’d been and 
what I’d been doing that year. But I 
couldn’t, sir. All the life that I looked 
back upon seemed muddled and mixed 
up, like a dream ; and I could only think 
of the little sister I’d said good-by to 
aboard the Venturesome forty years be- 
fore. I got round by little and little, 
and I was able half an hour afterwards 
to listen to Aunt Sarah’s talk. She was 
nigh upon seventy, poor old soul, and 
she’d always been a good one to talk. 
She asked me if it wasn’t a great thing 
for the family that Eliza had made such 
a match ; and if I wasn’t proud to tliink 
that my niece was a young heiress, that 
spoke all manner of languages, and rode 
in her own carriage ; and if that oughtn’t 
to be a consolation to me ? But I told 
her that I’d rather have found my sister 
married to the poorest man in Liverpool, 
and alive and well, to bid me welcome 
back to my native town. Aunt Sarah 
said if those were my religious opinions, 
she didn’t know what to say to me. 
And she showed me a picture of Eliza’s 
tomb in Beckenham churchyard, that had 
been painted expressly for her by Mr. 
Floyd’s orders. Floyd was the name of 
Eliza’s husband. And then she showed 
me a picture of Miss Floyd, the heiress, 
at the age of ten, which was the image 
of Eliza all but the pinafore ; and it’s 
that very Miss Floyd that I’m going to 
see.” 

“ And I dare say,” said the kind lis- 
tener, “that Miss Floyd will be very 
much pleased to see her sailor uncle.” 

“Well, sir, I think she will,” answered 
the captain. “ I don’t say it from any 
pride I take in myself. Lord knows; for 
I know I’m a rough and ready sort of a 
chap, that ’ud be no great ornament in 
a young lady’s drawing-room ; but if 
Eliza’s daughter’s any thing like Eliza, 
I know what she’ll say and what she’ll 
do as well as if I see her saying and 
doing it. She’ll clap her pretty little 
hands together, and she’ll clasp her arms 
round my neck, and she’ll say, ‘ Lor, 


AURORA FLOYD. 


149 


uncle, I am so glad to see you.’ And 
when I tell her that I was her mother’s 
only brother, and that me and her mo- 
ther was very fond of one another, she’ll 
burst out a cryin’, and she’ll hide her 
pretty face upon my shoulder, and she’ll 
sob as if her dear little heart was going 
to break for love of the mother that she 
never saw. That’s what she’ll do,” said 
Captain Prodder, “and I don’t think 
the truest born lady that ever was could 
do any better.” 

The good-natured traveller heard a 
great deal more from the captain of his 
plans for going to Beckenham to claim 
his niece’s affections, in spite of all the 
fathers in the world. 

“ Mr. Floyd’s a good man, I dare say, 
sir,” he said ; “ but he’s kept his daugh- 
ter apart from her aunt Sarah, and it is 
but likely he’ll try to keep her from me. 
But if he does, he’ll find he’s got a 
toughish customer to deal with in Cap- 
tain Samuel Prodder.” 

The merchant captain reached Beck- 
enham as the evening shadows were 
deepening amongst the Felden oaks and 
beeches, and the long rays of red sun- 
shine fading slowly out in the low sky. 
He drove up to the old red-brick man- 
sion in a hired fly, and presented himself 
at the hall-door just as Mr. Floyd was 
leaving the dining-room to finish the 
evening in his lonely study. 

The banker paused, to glance with 
some slight surprise at the loosely-clad, 
weather-beaten looking figure of the 
sailor, and mechanically put his hand 
amongst the gold and silver in his 
pocket. lie thought the seafaring man 
had come to present some petition for 
himself and his comrades. A life-boat 
was wanted somewhere on the Kentish 
coast, perhaps ; and this good-tempered 
looking, bronze-colored man had come 
to collect funds for the charitable work. 

He was thinking this, when, in reply 
to the town-bred footman’s question, the 
sailor uttered the name of Prodder 
and in the one moment of its utterance 
his thoughts flew back over one-and- 
twenty years, when he was madly in love 
with a beautiful actress, who owned 
blushingly to that plebeian cognomen. 
The banker’s voice was faint and husky 
as he turned to the captain, and bade 
him welcome to Felden Woods. 

“ Step this way, Mr. Prodder,” he 


said, pointing to the open door of the 
study. “I am very glad to see you. I 
— I — have often heard of you. You are 
my dead wife’s runaway brother.” 

Even amidst his sorrowful recollection 
of that brief happiness of the past, some 
natural alloy of pride had its part, and 
he closed the study-door carefully before 
he said this. 

“ God bless you, sir,” he said, holding 
out his hand to the sailor. “ I see I am 
right. Your eyes are like Eliza’s. You 
and yours will always be welcome be- 
neath my roof. Yes, Samuel Prodder, 
— you see I know your Christian name ; 
— and when I die you will find you have 
not been forgotten.” 

The captain thanked his brother-in- 
law heartily, and told him that he neither 
asked nor wished for any thing except 
permission to see his niece, Aurora 
Floyd. 

As he made this request, he looked 
towards the door of the little room, evi- 
dently expecting that the heiress might 
enter at any moment. He looked ter- 
ribly disappointed when the banker told 
him that Aurora wms married, and lived 
near Doncaster ; but that if he had hap- 
pened to come ten hours earlier, ho 
would have found her at Felden Woods. 

Ah I who has not heard those common 
words ? Who has not been told that, 
if they had come sooner, or gone earlier, 
or hurried their pace, or slackened it, or 
done something that they have not done, 
the whole course of life would have been 
otherwise ? Who has not looked back 
regretfully at the past, which, differently 
fashioned, would have made the present 
other than it is ? We think it hard that 
we cannot take the fabric of our life* to 
pieces, as a mantua-maker unpicks her 
work, and make up the stuff another 
way. How much waste we might save 
in the cloth, how much better a shape 
we might make the garment, if we only 
had the right to use our scissors and 
needle again, and re-fashion the past by 
the experience of the present I 

“ To think, now, that I should have 
been cornin’ yesterday !” exclaimed the 
captain; “but put off my journey be- 
cause it was a Friday I If I’d only 
kuowed I” 

Of course,*Captain Prodder, if you 
had only known what it was not given 
you to know, you would no doubt have 


150 


AUKOKA FLOYD. 


acted more prudently; and so would 
many other people. If Mr. William 
Palmer had known that detection was to 
dog the footsteps of crime, and the gal- 
lows to follow at the heels of detection, 
he would most likely have hesitated 
long before he mixed the strychnine- 
pills for the friend whom, with cordial 
voice, he was entreating to be of good 
cheer. If the speculators upon this 
year’s Derby had known that Caractacus 
was to be the winner, they would scarcely 
have hazarded their money upon Buck- 
stone and the Marquis. We spend the 
best part of our lives in making mistakes, 
and the poor remainder in reflecting 
how very easily we might have avoided 
them. 

Mr. Floyd explained, rather lamely 
perhaps, how it was that the Liverpool 
spinster had never been informed of her 
grand-niece’s marriage with John Mel- 
lish ; and the merchant -captain an- 
nounced his intention of starting for 
Doncaster early the next morning. 

“ Don’t think that I want to intrude 
upon your daughter, sir,” he said, as if 
perfectly acquainted with the banker’s 
nervous dread of such a visit. “I know 
her station’s high above me, though she’s 
my own sister’s only child ; and I make 
no doubt that those about her would be 
ready enough to turn up their noses at 
a poor old salt that has been tossed 
and tumbled about in every variety of 
weather for this forty year. I only want 
to see her once in a way, and to hear 
her say, perhaps, ‘Lor, uncle, what a 
rum old chap you are !’ There”!” ex- 
claimed Samuel Prodder suddenly, “ I 
think if I could only once hear her call 
me’ uncle, I could go back to sea, and 
die happy, though I never came ashore 
again.” 


CHAPTER XXL 

“HE ONLY SAID, I AM A WEARY.” 

Mr. James Conyers found the long 
summer’s days hang rather heavily upon 
his hands at Mellish Park, in the society 
of the rheumatic ex-trainer, the stable- 
boys, and Steeve Hargraves the Softy, 
and with no literary resources except 
the last Saturday’s BelVs Life^ and. 


sundry flimsy sheets of shiny, slippery 
tissue-paper, forwarded him by post from 
King Charles’s Croft, in the busy town 
of Leeds. 

He might have found plenty of work 
to do .in the stables, perhaps, if he had 
had a mind to do it ; but after the night 
of the storm there was a perceptible 
change in his manner ; and the showy 
pretence of being very busy, which he 
had made on his first arrival at the ])ark, 
was now exchanged for a listless and un- 
disguised dawdling and an unconcerned 
indifference, which caused the old trainer 
to shake his gray head, and mutter to 
his hangers-on that the new chap warn’t 
up to mooch, and was evidently too 
grand for his business. 

Mr. James cared very little for the 
opinion of these simple Yorkshire men; 
and he yawned in their faces, and stifled 
them with his cigar-smoke, with a dash- 
ing indifference that harmonised well 
with the gorgeous tints of his complex- 
ion and the lustrous splendor of his lazy 
eyes. He had taken the trouble to make 
himself very agreeable on the day suc- 
ceeding his arrival, and had distributed 
his hearty slaps on the shoulder and 
friendly digs in the ribs right and left, 
until he had slapped and dug himself 
into considerable popularity amongst the 
friendly rustics, who were ready to be 
bewitched by his handsome face and 
flashy manner. But after his interview 
with Mrs. Mellish in the cottage by the 
north gates, he seemed to abandon all 
desire to please, and to grow suddenly 
restless and discontented : so restless 
and so discontented t.liat he felt inclined 
even to quarrel with the unhappy Softy, 
and led his red-haired retainer a suffi- 
ciently uncomfortable life with his whims 
and vagaries. 

Stephen Hargrave bore this change in 
his new master’s manner with wonderful 
patience. Rather too patiently, per- 
haps ; with that slow, dogged, uncom- 
plaining patience of those who keep 
something in reserve as a set-off against 
present forbearance, and who invite ra- 
ther than ayoid injury, rejoicing in any 
thing which swells the great account, to 
be squared in future storm and fury. The 
Softy was a man who could hoard his 
hatred and vengeance, hiding the bad 
passions away in the dark corners of his 
poor shattered mind, and bringing them 


AURORA FLOYD. 


151 


out in the dead of the night to “kiss 
and talk to,” as the Moor’s wife kissed 
and conversed with the strawberry-em- 
broidered cambric. There must surely 
have been very little “ society” at Cy- 
prus, or Mrs. Othello could scarcely have 
been reduced to such insipid company. 

However it might be, Steeve bore 
Mr. Conyer’s careless insolence so very 
meekly that the trainer laughed at his at- 
tendant for a poor-spirited hound, whom 
a pair of flashing black eyes and a lady’s 
toy riding-whip could frighten out of 
the poor remnant of wit left in his mud- 
dled brain. He said something to this 
effect when Steeve displeased him once, 
in the course of the long, temper-trying 
summer’s day ; and the Softy turned 
away with something very like a chuckle 
of savage pleasure in acknowledgment 
of the compliment. He was more obse- 
quious than ever after it, and was hum- 
bly thankful for the ends of cigars which 
the trainer liberally bestowed upon him, 
and went into Doncaster for more spirits 
and more cigars in the course of the day, 
and fetched and carried as submissively 
as that craven-spirited hound to which 
his employer had politely compared him. 

Mr. Conyers did not even make a 
pretence of going to look at the horses 
on this blazing 5th of July, but lolled 
on the wMndow-sill, with his lame leg 
upon a chair, and his back against the 
framework of the little casement, smok- 
ing, drinking, and reading his price-lists 
all through the sunny day. The cold 
brandy-and-water which he poured, with- 
out half-an-hour’s intermission, down his 
handsome throat, seemed to have far less 
influence upon him than the same amount 
of liquid would have had upon a horse. 
It would have put the horse out of con- 
dition, perhaps ; but it had no effect 
whatever upon the trainer. 

Mrs. Powell, walking for the benefit 
of her health in the north shrubberies, 
and incurring imminent danger of a sun- 
stroke for the same praiseworthy reason, 
contrived to pass the lodge, and to see 
Mr. Conyers lounging, dark and splen- 
did, on the window-sill, exhibiting a kit- 
cat of his handsome person framed in 
the clustering foliage which hung about 
the cottage walls. She was rather em- 
barrassed by the presence of the Softy, 
who was sweeping the door-step, and 
who gave her a glance of recognition as 


! she passed, — a glance which might per- 
haps have said, “We know his secrets, 
you and I, handsome and insolent as he 
is; w'e know the paltry price at which he 
can be bought and sold. But we keep 
our counsel I we keep our counsel till 
time ripens the bitter fruit upon the tree, 
though our fingers itch to pluck it while 
it is still green.” 

Mrs. Powell stopped to give the 
trainer good-day, expressing as much 
surprise at seeing him at the north lodge 
as if she had been given to understand 
that he was travelling in Kamschatka ; 
but Mr. Conyers cut her civilities short 
with a yawn, and told her with easy 
familiarity that she would be conferring 
a favor upon him by sending him that 
morning’s Times as soon as the daily 
papers arrived at the park. The en- 
sign’s widow was too much under the 
influence of the graceful impertinence 
of his manner to resist it as she might 
have done, and returned to the house, 
bewildered and wondering, to comply 
with his request. So through the op- 
pressive heat of the summer’s day the 
trainer smoked, drank, and took his 
ease, while his dependent and follower 
watched him with a puzzled face, re- 
volving vaguely and confusedly in his 
dull, muddled brain the events of the 
previous night. 

But Mr. James Conyers grew weary at 
last even of his own ease ; and that inhe- 
rent restlessness which caused Rasselas 
to tire of his happy valley, and sicken 
for the free breezes on the hill-tops and 
the clamor of the distant cities, arose 
in the bosom of the trainer, and grew so 
strong that he began to chafe at the 
rural quiet of the north lodge, and to 
shuffle his poor lame leg wearily from 
one position to another in sheer discon- 
tent of mind, which, by one of those 
many subtle links between spirit and 
matter that tell us we are mortal, com- 
municated itself to his body, and gave 
him that chronic disorder which is 
popularly called “the fidgets.” An 
unquiet fever, generated amidst the 
fibres of the brain, and finding its way 
I by that physiological telegraph, the 
‘ spinal marrow, to the remotest stations 
i on the human railway. 

! Mr. James suffered from this common 
complaint to such a degree, that as the 
1 solemn strokes of the charcli-clock vi- 


AURORA FLOYD. 


152 

brated in sonorous music above the tree- 
tops of Mellisli Park in the sunny even- 
ing atmosphere, he threw down his pipe 
with an impatient shrug of the shoulders, 
and called to the Softy to bring him his 
hat and walking-stick. 

“Seven o’clock,” he muttered, “only 
seven o’clock. I think there must have 
been twenty-four hours in this blessed 
summer’s day.” 

He stood looking from the little case- 
ment-window with a discontented frown 
contracting his handsome eyebrows, and 
a peevish expression distorting his full, 
classically- moulded lips, as he said this. 
He glanced through the little casement, 
made smaller by its clustering frame of 
roses and clematis, jessamine and myr- 
tle, and looking like the port-hole of a 
ship that sailed upon a sea of summer 
verdure. He glanced through the cir- 
cular opening left by that scented frame- 
work of leaves and blossoms, into the 
long glades, where the low sunlight was 
dickering upon waving fringes of fern. 
He followed with his listless glance the 
wandering intricacies of the underwood, 
until they led his weary eyes away to 
distant patches of blue water, slowly 
changing to opal and rose-color in the 
declining light. He saw all these things 
with a lazy apathy, which had no power 
to recognize their beauty, or to inspire 
one latent thrill of gratitude to Him who 
had made them. He had better have 
been blind ; surely he had better have 
been blind. 

He turned his back upon the evening 
sunshine, and looked at the white face 
of Steeve Hargraves, the Softy, with 
every whit as much pleasure as he had 
felt in looking at nature in her loveliest 
aspect. 

“ A long day,” he said, “ an infernally 
tedious, wearisome day. Thank God, 
it’s over.” 

Strange that, as he uttered this im- 
pious thanksgiving, no subtle influence 
of the future crept through his veins to 
chill the slackening pulses of his heart, 
and freeze the idle words upon his lips. 
If he had known what was so soon to 
come; if he had known, as he thanked 
God for the death of one beautiful sum- 
mer’s day, never to be born again, with 
its twelve hours of opportunity for good 
or evil — surely he would have grovelled 
on the earth, stricken with a sudden ter- 


ror, and wept aloud for the shameful 
history of the life which lay behind 
him. 

He had never shed tears but once 
since his childhood, and then those tears 
were scalding drops of baffled rage and 
vengeful fury at the utter defeat of the 
greatest scheme of his life. 

“I shall go into Doncaster to-night, 
Hargraves,” he said to the Softy, who 
stood deferentially awaiting his master’s 
pleasure, and watching him, as he had 
watched him all day, furtively but inces- 
santly ; “I shall spend the evening in 
Doncaster, and — and — see if I can pick 
up a few wrinkles about the September 
meeting; not that there’s any thing 
worth entering amongst this set of 
screws. Lord knows,” he added, with 
undisguised contempt for poor John’s 
beloved stable. “ Is there a dog-cart, 
or a trap of any kind, I can drive over 
in ?” he asked of the Softy. 

Mr. Hargraves said that there was a 
Newport Pagnell, which was sacred to 
Mr. John Mellish, and a gig that was 
at the disposal of any of tlie upper ser- 
vants when they had occasion to go into 
Doncaster, as well as a covered van, 
which some of the lads drove into the 
town every day for the groceries and 
other matters required at the house. 

“Very good,” said Mr. Conyers; 
“you may run down to the stables, and 
tell one of the boys to ]iut the fastest 
pony of the lot into the Newport Fag- 
nell, and to bring it up here, and to look 
sharp.” 

“ But nobody but Muster Mellish 
rides in the Newport Pagnell,” sug- 
gested the Softy, with an accent of 
alarm. 

“What of that, you cowardly hound ?” 
cried the trainer conternjituously. “ I’m 
going to drive it to-night, don’t you 
year? D — n his Yorkshire insolence! 
Am I to be put down by him ? It’s his 
handsome wife that he takes such pride 
in, is it? Lord help him! Whose 
money bought the dog-cart, I wonder ? 
Aurora Floyd’s, perha[)s. And I’m not 
to ride in it, I suppose, because it’s my 
lord’s pleasure to drive his black-eyed 
lady in the sacred vehicle. Look you 
here, you brainless idiot, and understand 
me, if you can,” cried Mr. James Con- 
yers in a sudden rage, which crimsoned 
his handsome face, and lit up his lazy 


AURORA FLOYD. 


153 


eyes with a new fire — “look you here, 
Stephen Hargraves ; if it, wasn’t -that 
I’m tied hand and foot, and have been 
plotted against and tliwarted by a wo- 
man’s cunning at every turn, I could 
smoke my pipe in yonder house, or in a 
better house, this day.” 

lie pointed wiih liis finger to the 
pinnacled roof, and the reddened win- 
dows glittering in the evening sun, visi- 
ble far away amongst the trees. 

“Mr. John Mellish !” he said. “If 
his wife wasn’t such a she-devil as to be 
too many guns for the cleverest man in 
Christendom, I’d soon make him sing 
small. Fetch the Newport Pagnell,” 
he (!ried suddenly, with an abrupt change 
of tone; “fetch it, and be quick. I’m 
not safe to myself when I talk of this. 
I’m not safe when I think how near I 
was to half a million of money,” he mut- 
tered under his breath. 

lie limped out into the open air, fan- 
ning hiiiiself with the wide brim of his 
felt hat, and wiping the’ perspiratibn 
from his forehead. 

“ Be quick,” he cried impatiently to 
his deliberate attendant, who had list- 
ened eagerly to every word of his mas- 
ter’s ])assionate talk, and who now stood 
watching him even more intently than 
before — “ be quick, man, can’t you ? I 
don’t pay you five shillings a week to 
s are at me. Fetch the trap. I’ve 
worked myself into a fever, and nothing 
but a rattling drive will set me right 
again.” 

The Softy shuffled off as rapidly as it 
was within the range of his ability to 
walk. He had never been seen to run 
in his life; but had a slow, sidelong gait, 
which had some faint resemblance to 
tluit of the lower reptiles, but very little 
in common with the motions of his fel- 
low-men. 

Mr. James Conyers limped up and 
down the little grassy lawn in front of 
the north lodge. The excitement which 
had crimsoned his face gradually sub- 
sided, as he vented his disquietude 
in occasional impatient exclamations. 
“ Two thousand pounds,” he muttered; 
“a pitiful paltry two thousand. Not a 
twelvemonth’s interest on the money I 
ought to have had — the money I should 
have had, it^ — ” 

He stopped abruptly, and growled 
something like an oath between his set 


teeth, as he struck his stick with angry 
violence into the soft grass. It is espe- 
cially hard when we are reviling our bad 
fortune, and quarreling with our fate, to 
find at last, on wandering backwards to 
the source of our ill-luck, that the pri- 
mary cause of all has been our own evil- 
doing. It was this that made Mr. Con- 
yers stop abruptly in his reflections upon 
his misfortunes, and break off with a 
smothered oath, and listen impatiently 
for the wheels of the Newport Pagnell. 

The Softy appeared presently, leading 
the horse by the bridle. He had not 
presumed to seat himself in the sacred 
vehicle, and he stared wonderingly at 
James Conyers as the trainer tumbled 
about the chocolate-cloth cushions, ar- 
ranging them afresh for his own ease' 
and comfort. Neither the bright varnish 
of the dark-brown panels, nor the crim- 
son crest, nor the glittering steel orna- 
ments on the neat harness,' nor any of 
the exquisitely finished appointments of 
the light vehicle, provoked one word 
of criticism from Mr. Conyers. He 
mounted as easily as his lame leg would 
allow him, and taking the reins from the 
Softy, lighted his cigar preparatory to 
starting. 

“ You needn't sit up for me to-night,’^ 
he said, as he drove into the dusty high- 
road ; “ I shall be late.” 

Mr. Hargraves shut the iron gates 
with a loud clanking noise upon his new 
master. 

“But I shall, though,” he muttered, 
looking askant through the bars at 
the fast -disappearing Newport Pagnell, 
which was now little more than a black, 
spot in a white cloud of dust; “ but I 
shall sit up, though. You’ll come home 
drunk, I lay.” (Yorkshire is so pre- 
eminently a horse-racing and betting 
county, that even simple country folk 
who have never wagered a sixpence in 
the quiet course of their lives say “ I 
lay” where a Londoner would say “I 
dare say.”) “You’ll come home drunk, 
I lay ; folks generally do from Don- 
caster ; and I shall hear some more of 
your wild talk. Yes, yes,” he said in a 
slow, reflective tone; “it’s very wild 
talk, and I can’t make top nor tail of 
it yet — not yet; but it seems to rao 
somehow as if I knew what it all meant, 
only I can’t put it together — I can’t put 
it together. There’s something missin’, 


154 


AURORA FLOYD. 


and the want of that something hinders 
me putting it together. ’’ 

He rubbed his stubble of coarse red 
hair with his two strong, awkward 
hands, as if he would fain have rubbed 
some wanting intelligence into his head. 

“ Two thousand pound, he said, 
walking slowly back to the cottage. 

Two thousand pound. It’s a power 
of money. Why it’s two thousand pound 
that the winner gets by the great race at 
Newmarket, and there’s all the gentle- 
folks ready to give their ears for it. 
There’s great lords fighting and strug- 
gling against each other for it ; so it’s 
no wonder a poor fond chap like me 
thinks summat about it.” 

He sat down upon the step of the 
lodge-door to smoke the cigar-ends 
which his benefactor had thrown him in 
the course of the day ; but he still rumi- 
nated upon this subject, and he still 
stopped sometimes, between the extinc- 
tion of one cheroot-stump and the illu- 
minating of another, to mutter. “ Two 
thousand pound. Twenty hundred pound. 
Forty times fifty pound,” with an unc- 
tious chuckle after the enunciation of 
each figure, as if it was some privilege 
even to be able to talk of such vast 
sums of money. So might some doting 
lover, in the absence of his idol, murmur 
the beloved name to the summer breeze. 

The last crimson lights upon the 
patches of blue water died out beneath 
the gathering darkness; but the Softy 
sat, still smoking, and still ruminating, 
till the stars were high in the purple 
vault above his head. A little after ten 
(O’clock he heard the rattling of wheels 
and the tramp of horses’ hoofs upon the 
high-road, and going to the gate he 
looked out through the .iron bars. As 
the vehicle dashed by the north gates he 
saw that it was one of the Mellish-Park 
carriages, which had been sent to the 
station to meet John and his wife. 

“ A short visit to Loon’on,” he mut- 
tered. “ I lay she’s been to fetch the 
brass. ” 

The greedy eyes of the half-witted 
groom peered through the iron bars at 
the passing carriage, as if he would have 
fain looked through its opaque pannels 
in search of that which he had denomi- 
nated “the brass.” He had a vague 
idea that two thousand pounds would 
be a great bulk of money, and that Au- 


rora would carry it in a chest or a bundle 
that might be perceptible through the 
carriage-window. 

“ I’ll lay she’s been to fetch t’ brass,” 
he repeated, as he crept back to the 
lodge-door. 

He resumed his seat upon the door- 
step, his cigar-ends, and his reverie, rub- 
bing his head very often, sometimes with 
one hand, sometimes with both, but 
always as if he were trying to rub some 
wanting sense or power of perception 
into his wretched brains. Sometimes he 
gave a short restless sigh, as if he had 
been trying' all this time to guess some 
difficult enigma, and was on the point 
of giving it up. 

It was long after midnight when Mr. 
James Conyers returned, very much the 
worse for brandy-and-water and dust. 
He tumbled over the Softy, still sitting 
on the step of the open door, and then 
cursed Mr. Hargraves for being in the 
way. 

“ B’t s’nc’ y’ h’v’ ch’s’n’ t’ s’t ’p,” said 
the trainer, speaking a language entirely 
composed of consonants, “ y’ m’y dr’v’ 
tr’p b’ck t’ st’bl’s.” 

By which rather obscure speech he 
gave the Softy to understand that he 
was to take the dog-cart back to Mr. 
Mellish’s stable-yard. 

Sleeve Hargraves did his drunken 
master’s bidding, and leading the horse 
homewards through the quiet night 
found a cross boy with a lantern in his 
hand waiting at the gate of the stable- 
yard, and by no means disposed for con- 
versation, except, indeed, to the extent 
of the one remark that he, the cross boy, 
hoped the new trainer wasn’t going to 
be up to this game every night, and 
hoped the mare, which had been bred 
for a racer, hadn’t been ill used. 

All John Mellish’s horses seemed to 
have been bred for racers, and to have 
dropped gradually from prospective win- 
ners of the Derby, Oaks, Chester Cup, 
Great Ebor, Yorkshire Stakes, Leger, 
and Doncaster Cup, — to say nothing of 
minor victories in the way of Northum-- 
berland Plates, Liverpool Autumn Cups, 
and Curragb Handicaps, through every 
variety of failure and defeat, — into the 
every-day ignominy of harness. Even 
the van which carried groceries was drawn 
by a slim-legged, narrow-chested, high- 
shouldered animal, called the “ Yorkshire 


AURORA FLOYD. 


155 


Childers,” and bought, in its sunny colt- 
hood, at a great price by poor John. 

Mr. Conyers was snoring aloud in his 
little bedroom when Steeve Hargraves 
returned to the lodge. The Softy stared 
wonderingly at the handsome face bru- 
talised by drink, and the classical head 
flung back upon the crumpled pillow in 
one of those wretched positions which 
intoxication always chooses for its re- 
pose. Steeve Hargraves rubbed his 
head harder even than before, as he 
looked at the perfect profile, the red, 
half-parted lips, the dark fringe of lashes 
on the faintly crimson-tinted cheeks. 

“ Perhaps I might have been good for 
summat if I’d been like j/ow,” he said, 
with a half-savage melancholy. “ I 
shouldn’t have been ashamed of myself 
then. I shouldn’t have crept into dark 
corners to hide myself, and think why I 
wasn’t like other people, and what a bit- 
ter, cruel shame it was that I wasn’t like 
’em. You’ve no call to hide yourself 
from other folks; nobody tells you to 
get out of the way for an ugly hound, as 
you told me this morning, hang you. 
The world’s smooth enough for you.” 

So may Caliban have looked at Pros- 
pero with envy and hate in his heart be- 
fore going to his obnoxious tasks of 
dish-washing and trencher-scraping. 

He shook his fist at the unconscious 
sleeper as he finished speaking, and then 
stooped to pick up the trainer’s dusty 
clothes, which were scattered upon the 
floor. 

“ I suppose I’m to brush these before 
I go to bed,” he muttered, “ that my 
lord may have ’em ready when he wakes 
in th’ morning.” 

He took the clothes on his arm and 
the light in his hand, and went down to 
the lower room, where he found a brush 
and set to work sturdily, enveloping 
himself in a cloud of dust, like some ugly 
Arabian genie who was going to trans- 
form himself into a handsome prince. 

He stopped suddenly in his brushing 
by and by, and crumpled the waistcoat 
in his hand. 

“ There’s some paper,” he exclaimed. 

A paper sewed up between stuff and 
linin’.” 

He omitted the definite article before 
each of the substantives, as is a common 
habit with his countrymen when at all 
excited. 


“A bit o’ paper,” he repeated, “be- 
tween stuff and linin’. I’ll rip t’ waist- 
coat open and see what-’tis.” 

He took his clasp-knife from his 
pocket, carefully unripped a part of one 
of the seams in the waistcoat, and ex- 
tracted a piece of paper folded double, 
— a decent-sized square of rather thick 
paper, partly printed, partly written. 

He leaned over the light with his el- 
bows on the table, and read the contents 
of this paper, slowly and laboriously, fol- 
lowing every word with his thick fore- 
finger, sometimes stopping a long time 
upon one syllable, sometimes trying back 
half a line or so, but always plodding 
patiently with his ugly forefinger. 

When he came to the last word, he 
burst suddenly into a loud chuckle, as, 
if he had just succeeded in guessing that 
difficult enigma which had puzzled him 
all the evening. 

“ I know it all now,” he said. “ I can 
put it all together now. His words ; 
and hers ; and the money. I can put it 
all together, and make out the meaning 
of it. She’s going to give him the two 
thousand pound to go away from here 
and say nothing about this.” 

He refolded the paper, replaced it 
carefully in its hiding-place between the 
stuff and lining of the waistcoat, then 
searched in his capacious pocket for a 
fat leathern book, in which, amongst all 
sorts of odds and ends, there were some 
needles and a tangled skein of black 
thread. Then, stooping over the light, 
he slowly sewed up the seam which he 
had ripped open, dexterously and neatly 
enougli, in spite of the clumsiness of his 
big fingers. 


CHAPTER XXII. 

STILL CONSTANT. 

Mr. James Conyers took his break 
fast in his own apartment upon the 
morning after his visit to Doncaster, 
and Stephen Hargraves waited upon 
him ; carrying him a basin of muddy 
coffee, and enduring his ill-humor with 
the long-suffering which seemed peculiar 
to this hump-backed, low-voiced stable- 
heli)er. 

The trainer rejected the coffee, and 


156 


AURORA FLOYD. 


called for a pipe, and lay smoking half 
the summer morning, with the scent of 
the roses and honeysuckle floating into 
his close chamber, and the July sunshine 
glorifying the sham roses and blue lilies 
that twisted themselves in floricultural 
monstrosity about the cheap paper on 
the walls. 

The Softy cleaned his master’s boots, 
set them in the sunshine to air, washed 
the breakfast things, swept the door- 
step, and then seated himself upon it to 
ruminate, with his elbows on his knees 
and his hands twisted in his coarse red 
hair. The silence of the summer atmo- 
sphere was only broken by the drowsy 
hum of the insects in the wood, and the 
occasional dropping of some early- 
blighted leaf. 

Mr. Conyers’s temper had been in no 
manner improved by his night’s dissipa- 
tion in the town of Doncaster. Heaven 
knows what entertainment he had found 
in those lonely streets, that grass-grown 
market-place and teuantless stalls, or 
that dreary and hermetically-sealed build- 
ing, which looks like a prison on three 
sides and a chapel on the fourth, and 
which, during the September meeting, 
bursts suddenly into life and light with 
huge posters flaring against its gaunt 
walls, and a bright blue-ink announce- 
ment of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Mathews, 
or Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean, for five 
nights only. Normal amusement in the 
town of Doncaster between those two 
oases in the year’s dreary circle, the 
spring and autumn meetings, there is 
none. But of abnormal and special en- 
tertainment there may be much j only 
known to such men as Mr. James Con- 
yers, to whom the most sinuous alley is 
a pleasant road, so ].ong as it leads, di- 
rectly or indirectly, to the betting-man’s 
god — Money. 

However this might be, Mr. Conyers 
bore upon him all the symptoms of hav- 
ing, as the popular phrase has it, made 
a night of it. His eyes were dim and 
glassy ; his tongue hot and furred, and 
uncomfortably large for his parched 
mouth ; his hand so shaky that the ope- 
ration which he performed with a razor 
before his looking-glass was a toss-up 
between suicide and shaving. His heavy 
head seemed to have been transformed 
into a leaden box full of buzzing noises ; 
and after getting half through his toilet 


he gave it up for a bad job, and threw 
himself upon the bed he had just left, a 
victim to that biliary derangement which 
inevitably follows an injudicious admix- 
ture of alcoholic and malt liquors. 

“ A tumbler of Hockheimer,” he mut- 
tered, “or even the third-rate Cl)ablis 
they give one at a table -d’’ hate, would 
freshen me up a little ; but there’s no- 
thing to be had in this abominable place 
except brandy-and-water.?’ 

He called to the Softy, and ordered 
him to mix a tumbler of the last-named 
beverage, cold and w^ak. 

Mr. Conyers drained the cool and 
lucid draught, and flung himself back 
upon the pillow with a sigh of relief. 
He knew that he would be thirsty again 
in five or ten minutes, and that the 
respite was a brief one ; but still it was 
a respite. 

“ Have they come home ?” he asked. 

“Who?” 

“Mr. and Mrs. Mellish, you idiot?” 
answered the trainer fiercely. “ Who 
else should I bother my head about ? 
Did they come home last night while I 
was away ?” 

The Softy told his master that he had 
seen one of the carriages drive past the 
north gates at a little after ten o’clock 
upon the preceding night, and that he 
supposed it contained Mr. and Mrs. 
Mellish. 

“ Then you’d better go up to the 
house and make sure,” said Mr. Con- 
yers ; “I want to know.” 

“ Go up to th’ house ?” 

“Yes, coward ! — yes, sneak ! Do you 
suppose that Mrs. Mellish will eat you ?” 
“ I don’t suppose nought o’ t’ sort,” 
answered the Softy sulkily, “but I’d 
rather not go.” 

“But I tell you I want to know,” 
said Mr. Conyers; “I want to know if 
Mrs. Mellish is at home, and what she’s 
up to, and whetlmr there are any visitors 
at the house, and all about her. Do you 
understand ?” 

“ Yes, it’s easy enough to understand, 
but it’s rare and difficult to do,” replied 
Steeve Hargraves. “ How am I to find 
out ? Who’s to tell me ?” 

“ How do I know ?” cried tlie trainer 
impatiently ; for Stephen Hargrave’s 
slow, dogged stu})idity was throwing the 
dashing James Conyers into a fever of 
vexation. “How do I know? Don’t 


A-U EORA FLOYD. 


you see that I’m- too ill to stir from 
this bed ? Pd go myself if I wasn’t. 
And can’t you go and do what I tell you 
without standing arguing there until you 
drive me mad ?” 

Steeve Hargraves muttered some 
sulky apology, and shuffled out of the 
room. Mr. Conyer’s handsome eyes 
followed him with a dark frown. It is 
not a pleasant state of health which 
succeeds a drunken debauch ; and the 
trainer was angry with himself for the 
weakness which had taken him to Don- 
caster upon the preceding evening, and 
thereby inclined to vent his anger upon 
other people. 

There is a great deal of vicarious 
penance done in this world. Lady’s- 
maids are apt to suffer for the follies of 
their mistresses, and Lady Clara 'Yere 
de Vere’s French Abigail is extremely 
likely to have to atone for young Lau- 
rence’s death by patient endurance of 
my lady’s ill-temper and much unpick- 
ing and remaking of boddices, which 
would have fitted her ladyship well 
enough in any other state of mind than 
the remorseful misery which is engen- 
dered of an evil conscience. The ugly 
gash across young Laurence’s throat, to 
say nothing of the cruel slanders cir- 
culated after the inquest, may make life 
almost unendurable to the poor meek 
nursery-governess who educates Lady 
Clara’s younger sisters ; and the younger 
sisters themselves, and mamma and papa, 
and my lady’s youthful confidantes, and 
even her haughtiest adorers, all have 
their share k the expiation of her lady- 
ship’s wickedness. For she will not — or 
she caTiTzo^— meekly own that sKe has 
been guilty, and shut herself away from 
the world, to make her own atonement 
and work her own redemption. So she 
thrusts the burden of her sins upon other 
people’s shoulders, and travels the first 
stage to captious and disappointed old- 
maidism. 

The commercial gentlemen who make 
awkward mistakes in the city, the devo- 
tees of the turf whose misfortunes keep 
them away from Mr. Tattersal’s premises 
on a settling-day, can make innocent 
women and children carry the weight of 
their sins, and suffer the penalties of 
their foolishness. Papa still smokes his 
Cabanas at fourpence halfpenny apiece,, 
or his mild Turkish at nine shillings a 


157 

I pound, and still dines at the “Crown 
I and Sceptre” in the drowsy summer 
weather, when the bees are asleep in the 
flowers at Morden College, and the fra- 
grant hay newly stacked in the meadows 
beyond Blackheath. But mamma must 
wear her faded silk, or have it dyed, as 
the case may be ; and the children must 
forego the promised happiness, the wild 
delight, of sunny rambles on a shingly 
beach, bordered by yellow sands that 
stretch away to hug an ever-changeful 
and yet ever-constant ocean in their 
tawny arms. And not only mamma and 
the little ones, but other mothers and 
other little ones, must help in the heavy 
sum of penance for the defaulter’s- ini- 
quities. The baker may have calculated 
upon receiving that long-standing ac- 
count, and may have planned a new 
•gown for his wife, and a summer treat 
for his little ones, to be paid for by the 
expected money ; and the honest trades- 
man, soured by the disappointment of 
having to disappoint those he loves, is 
likely to be cross to them into the bar- 
gain ; and even to grudge her Sunday 
out to the household drudge who waits 
at his little table. The influence of the 
strong man’s evil deed slowly percolates 
through insidious channels of which he 
never knows or dreams. The deed of 
folly or of guilt does its fatal work when 
the sinner who committed it has for- 
gotten his wickedness. Who shall say 
where or when the results of one man’s 
evil-doing shall cease ? The seed of sin 
engenders no common root, shooting 
straight upwards through the earth, and 
bearing a given crop. It is the germ of 
a foul running weed, whose straggling 
suckers travel underground, beyond the 
ken of mortal eye, beyond the power of 
mortal calculation. If Louis XY. had 
been a conscientious man, terror and 
murder, misery and confusion, might 
never have reigned upon the darkened 
face of beautiful France. If Eve had 
rejected the fatal fruit, we might all have 
been in Eden to-day. 

Mr. James Conyers, then, after the 
manner of mankind, vented his spleen 
upon the* only person who came in his 
wa}^ and was glad to bo able to des- 
patch the Softy upon an unpleasant er- 
rand, and make his attendant as uncom- 
fortable as he was himself. 

“ My head rocks as if I was on board 


158 


AURORA FLOYD. 


a steam -packet,” he muttered, as he lay 
alone in his little bedroom, “and my 
hand shakes so that I caidt hold my 
pipe steady while I fill it. I’m in a nice 
state to have to talk to her. As if it 
wasn’t as much as I can do at the best 
of times to be a match for her.” 

He flung aside his pipe half-filled, and 
turned his head wearily upon the pillow. 
The hot sun and the buzz of the insects 
tormented him. There was a big blue- 
bottle fly blundering and wheeling about 
amongst the folds of the dimity bed- 
curtains; a fly which seemed the very 
genius of delirium tremens ; but the 
trainer was too ill to do more than swear 
at his purple-winged tormenter. 

He was awakened from a half-doze 
by the treble voice of a small stable-boy 
in the room below. He called out 
angrily for the lad to come up and state* 
his business. His business was a mes- 
sage from Mr. John Mellish, who wished 
to see the trainer immediately. 

“ Mr. Mellisli^” muttered James Con- 
yers to himself. “ Tell your master I’m 
too ill to stir, but that I’ll wait upon 
him in the evening,” he said to the boy. 
“ You can see I’m ill, if you’ve got any 
eyes, and you can say that you found me 
in bed.” 

The lad departed with these instruc- 
tions, and Mr. Conyers returned to his 
own thoughts, which appeared to be by 
no means agreeable to him. 

To drink spirituous liquors and play 
all-fours in the sanded tap-room of a 
sporting public is no doubt a very deli- 
cious occupation, and would be altoge- 
ther Elysian and unobjectionable if one 
could always be drinking spirits and 
playing all-fours. But as tA finest pic- 
ture ever painted by Raphael or Rubens 
is but a dead blank of canvas upon the 
reverse, so there is generally a disagree- 
able other side to all the pleasures of 
earth, and a certain reaction after card- 
playing and brandy-drinking which is 
more than equivalent in misery to the 
pleasures which have preceded it. Mr. 
Conyers, tossing his hot head from side 
to side upon a pillow which seemed 
even hotter, took a very different view 
of life to that which he had expouflded 
to his boon companions only the night 
before in the tap-room of the “ Lion 
and Lamb,” Doncaster. 

“ I should like to have stopped over 


the Leger,” he muttered, “ for I meant 
to make a hatful of money out of the 
Conjuror ; for if what they say at Rich- 
mond is any thing like truth, he’s safe 
to win. But there’s no going against 
my lady when her mind’s made up. It’s 
take it or leave it — yes or no — and be 
quick about it.” 

Mr. Conyers garnished his speech 
with two or three expletives common 
enough amongst the men with whom he 
had lived, but not to be recorded here ; 
and, closing his eyes, fell into a doze; a 
half-waking, half-sleeping torpidity ; in 
which he felt as if his head had become 
a ton-weight of iron, and was dragging 
him backwards through the pillow into 
a bottomless abyss. 

While the trainer lay in this comfort- 
less Semi-slumber Stephen Hargraves 
walked slowly and sulkily through the 
wood on his way to the invisible fence, 
from which point he meant to reconnoi- 
tre the premises. 

The irregular fa9ude of the old house 
fronted him across the smooth breadth 
of lawn, dotted and broken by parti- 
colored flower-beds ; by rustic clumps 
of gnarled oak supporting mighty clus- 
ters of vivid scarlet geraniums, all aflame 
in the sunshine ; by trelliced arches laden 
with trailing roses of every varying 
shade, from palest blush to deepest crim- 
son ; by groups of evergreens, whose 
every leaf was rich in beauty and luxu- 
riance, whose every tangled garland 
would have made a worthy chaplet for 
a king. 

The Softy, in the semi-c^rknesses of 
his soul, had some glimmer of that light 
which was altogether wanting in Mr. 
James Conyers. He felt that these 
things were beautiful. The broken lines 
of the ivy-covered house-front. Gothic 
here, Elizabethan there, were in some 
manner pleasant to him. The scattered 
rose-leaves on the lawn ; the flickering 
shadows of the evergreens upon the 
grass ; the song of a skylark too lazy to 
soar, and content to warble among the 
bushes ; the rippling sound of a tiny 
waterfall far away in the wood, — made a 
language in which he only understood a 
few straggling syllables here and there, 
but which was not altogether a mean- 
ingless jargon to him, as it was to the 
•trainer; to whose mind Holborn Hill 
would have conveyed as much of the 


AURORA FLOYD. 


sublime as the untrodden pathways of 
the Jungfrau. The Softy dimly per- 
ceived that Mellish Park was beautiful, 
and he felt a fiercer hatred against the 
person whose influence had ejected him 
from his old home. 

The house fronted the south, and the 
Yenetian shutters were all closed upon 
this hot summer’s day. Stephen Har- 
graves looked for his old enemy Bow- 
wow, who was likely enough to be lying 
on the broad stone steps before the hall- 
door ; but there was no sign of the dog’s 
presence anywhere about. The hall- 
door was closed, and the Yenetian 
shutters, under the rose and clematis- 
shadowed verandah which sheltered John 
Mellish’s room, were also closed. The 
Softy walked around by the fence which 
encircled the lawn to another iron gate 
which opened close to John’s room, and 
which was *so completely overshadowed 
by a clump of beeches as to form a safe 
point of observation, This gate had 
been left ajar by Mr. Mellish himself, 
most likely, for that gentleman had a 
happy knack of forgetting to shut the 
doors and gates which he opened ; and 
the Softy, taking courage from the still- 
ness around and about the house, ven- 
tured into the garden, and crept stealth- 
ily towards the closed shutters before 
the windows of Mr. Mellish’s apart- 
ment, with much of the manner which 
might distinguish some wretched mon- 
grel cur who thrusts himself within ear- 
shot of a mastiff’s kennel. 

The mastiff was out of the way on 
this occasion, for one of the shutters 
was ajar ; and when Stephen Hargraves 
peeped cautiously into the room, he was 
relieved to find it empty. John’s elbow- 
chair was pushed a little way from the 
table, which was laden with open pis- 
tol-cases and breech-loading revolvers. 
These, with two or three silk handker- 
chiefs, a piece of chamois-leather, and a 
bottle of oil, bore witness that Mr. Mel- 
lish had been beguiling the morning by 
the pleasing occupation of inspecting 
and cleaning the fire-arms, which formed 
the chief ornament of his study. 

It was his habit to begin this opera- 
tion with great preparation, and alto- 
gether upon a gigantic scale ; to reject 
all assistance with scorn ; to put himself 
in a violent perspiration at the end of 
half an hour, and to send one of the ser- 


159 

vants to finish the business, and restore 
the room to its old order. 

The Softy looked with a covetous eye 
at the noble array of guns and pistols. 
He had that innate love of these things 
which seems to be implanted in every 
breast, whatever its owner’s state or sta- 
tion. He had hoarded his money once 
to buy himself a gun ; but when he had 
saved the five-and-thirty shillings de- 
manded by a certain pawnbroker of Don- 
caster for an old-fashioned musket, which 
was almost as heavy as a small cannon, 
his courage failed him, and he could not 
bring himself to part with the precious 
coins, whose very touch could send a 
thrill of rapture through the slow cur- 
rent of his blood. No, he could not 
surrender such a sum of money to the 
Doncaster pawnbroker even for the pos- 
session of his heart’s desire ; and as the 
stern money-lender refused to take pay- 
ment in weekly instalments of sixpences, 
Stephen was fain to go without the gun, 
and to hope that some day or other Mr. 
John Mellish would reward his services 
by the gift of some disused fowling-piece 
by Forsythe or Manton. But there was 
no hope of such happiness now. A new 
dynasty reigned at Mellish, and a black- 
eyed queen, who hated him, had forbid- 
den him to sully her domain with the 
traces of his shambling foot. He felt 
that he was in momentary peril upon the 
threshold of that sacred chamber, which, 
during his long service at Mellish Park, 
he had always regarded as a very temple 
of the beautiful ; but the sight of fire- 
arms upon the table had a magnetic at- 
traction for him, and he drew the Yene- 
tian shutter a little way further ajar, and 
slid himself in through the open window. 
Then, flushed and trembling with ex- 
citement, he dropped into John’s chair, 
and began to handle the precious imple- 
ments of warfare upon pheasants and 
partridges, and to turn them about in his 
big, clumsy hands. 

Delicious as the guns were, and de- 
lightful though it was to draw one of 
the revolvers up to his shoulder, and 
take aim at an imaginary pheasant, the 
pistols were even still more attractive ; 
foi^with them he could not refrain from 
taking imaginary aim at his enemies. 
Sometimes at James Conyers, who had 
snubbed and abused him, and had made 
the bread of dependence bitter to him j 


160 


■k 

AURORA FLOYD. 


very often at Aurora ; once or twice at 
poor John Mellish ; but always with a 
darkness upon liis pallid face which 
would have promised little mercy, had 
the pistol been loaded and the enemy 
near at hand. 

There was one pistol, a small one, 
and an odd one apparently, for he could 
not find its fellow, which took a peculiar 
bold upon his fancy. It was as pretty 
as a lady’s toy, and small enough to be 
carried in it lady’s pocket, but the ham- 
mer snapped upon the nipple, when the 
Softy pulled the trigger, with a sound 
that evidently meant mischief. 

“ To think that such a little thing as 
this could kill a big man like you,” mut- 
tered Mr. Hargraves, with a jerk of his 
bead in the direction of the north lodge. 

He had this pistol still in bis hand 
when the door was suddenly opened, 
and Aurora Mellish stood upon the 
threshold. 

She spoke as she opened the door, 
almost before she was in the room. 

“John, dear,” she said, “ Mrs. Powell 
wants to know whether Colonel Maddi- 
son dines here to-day with the Loft- 
bouses.” 

She drew back with a shudder that 
shook her from head to foot, as her eyes 
met the Softy’s hated face instead of 
John’s familiar glance. 

In spite of the fatigue and agitation 
w’hich she had endured within the last 
few days, she was not looking ill. Her 
eyes were unnaturally bright, and a fe- 
verish color burned in her cheeks. Her 
manner, always impetuous, was restless 
and impatient to-day, as if her nature 
bad been charged with a terrible amount 
of electricity, till she were likely at any 
moment to explode in some tempest of 
anger or woe. 

“ You here I” she exclaimed. 

The Softy in his embarrassment was 
at a loss for an excuse for his presence. 
He pulled his shabby hair-skin cap off, 
and twisted it round and round in his 
great hands ; but he made no other re- 
cognition of his late master’s wife. 

“Who sent you to this room ? asked 
Mrs. Mellish ; “ I thought you had been 
forbidden this place. The house at 
least,” she added, her face crimsoning 
indignantly as she spoke, “although Mr. 
Conyers may choose to bring you to. the 
north lodge. Who sent you here ?” 


“Him,” answered Mr. Hargraves 
doggedly, with another jerk of his head 
towards the trainer’s abode. 

“ James Conyers ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ What does he want here, then ?” 

“ He told me to come down t’ th’ 
house, and .see if you and the master ’d 
come back.” 

“ Then you can go and tell him that 
we have come back,” she said contemptu- 
ously; “and that if he’d waited a little 
longer he would have had no occasion 
to send his spies after me.” 

The Softy crept towards the window, 
feeling that his dismissal was contained 
in these words, and looking rather sus- 
piciously at the array of driving and 
hunting whips over the mantel-piece. 
Mrs. Mellish might have a fancy for 
laying one of these about his shoulders, 
if he happened to offend her! 

“ Stop 1” she said impetuously, as he 
had his hand upon the shutter to push 
it open ; “ since you are here you can 
take a message, or a scrap of writing,” 
she said contemptuously, as if she could 
not bring herself to call any communi- 
cation between herself and Mr. Conyers 
a note, or a letter. “Yes; you can 
take a few lines to your master. Stop 
there while I write.” 

She waved her hand with a gesture 
which expressed plainly, “ Come no 
nearer; you are too obnoxious to be en- 
dured except at a distance,” and seated 
herself at John’s writing-table. 

She scratched two lines with a quill- 
pen upon a slip of paper, which she 
folded while the ink was still wet. She 
looked for an envelope amongst her hus- 
band’s littered paraphernalia of account- 
books, bills, receipts, and price-lists, and 
finding one after some little trouble, put 
the folded paper into it, fastening the 
gummed flap with her lips, and handed 
the missive to Mr. Hargraves, who had 
watched her with hungry eyes, eager to 
fathom this new stage in the mystery. 

Was the two thousand pounds in that 
envelope ? he thought. No, surely, such 
a sum of money must be a huge pile of 
gold and silver, — a mountain of glitter- 
ing coin. He had seen cheques some- 
times, and bank-notes in the hands of 
Langley the trainer, and he had won- 
dered how it was that money could be 
represented by those pitiful bits of paper. 


AURORA FLOYD. 


IGl 


“ I’d rayther hav’t i’ goold,” he 
thought; “if ’twas mine, I’d have it all 
i’ goold and silver.” 

He was very glad when he found him- 
self safely clear of the whips and Mrs. 
John Mellish, and as soon as he reached 
the shelter of the thick foliage upon the 
northern side of the park, he sat to work 
to examine the packet which had been 
intrusted to him. 

Mrs. Mellish had liberally moistened 
the adhesive flap of the envelope, as 
people are apt to do when they are in a 
hurry ; the consequence of which care- 
lessness was that the gum was still so 
wet that Stephen Hargraves found no 
difficulty in opening the envelope with- 
out tearing it. He looked cautiously 
about him, convinced himself that he 
was unobserved, and then drew out the 
slip of paper. It contained very little 
to reward him for his trouble, only these 
few words, scrawled in Aurora’s most 
careless hand : 

“ Be on the southern side of the wood, 
near the turnstile, between half-past 
eight and nine.” 

The Softy grinned as he slowly made 
himself master of this communication. 

“ It’s oncommon hard wroitin’, t’ make 
out th’ shapes o’ th’ letters,” he said, as 
he finished his task. “ Whoy can’t gen- 
tlefolks wroit like Ned Tiller oop at th’ 
lied Lion, — printin’ loike. It’s easier 
to read, and a deal prettier to look at.” 

He refastened the envelope, pressing 
it down with his dirty thumb to make it 
adhere once more, and not much im- 
proving its appearance thereby. 

“ He’s one of your rare careless chaps,” 
he muttered as he surveyed the letter ; 
“ he won’t stop t’ examine if it’s been 
open before. What’s insoide were hardly 
worth th’ trouble of openin’ it; but 
perhaps it’s as well to know it too.” 

Immediately after Stephen Hargraves 
had disappeared through the open win- 
dow Aurora turned to leave the room 
by the door, intending to go in search 
of her husband. 

She was arrested on the threshold by 
Mrs. Powell, who was standing at the 
door, with the submissive and deferential 
patience of paid companionship depicted 
in her insipid face. 

^‘JDoes Colonel Maddison dine here, 
my dear Mrs. Mellish?” she asked 
meekly ; yet with a pensive earnestness 
10 


which suggested that her life, or at any 
rate her peace of mind, depended upon 
the answer. “I am so anxious to know, 
for of course it will make a difference 
with the fish,— and perhaps we ought to 
have some mulligatawny; or at any rate 
a dish of curry amongst the entrees ; for 
these elderly East-Indian officers are 
so—” 

“ I don’t know,” answered Aurora 
curtly. “ Were you standing at the door 
long before I came out, Mrs. Powell ?” 

“Oh, no,” answered the ensig;i’s 
widow, “not long. Did you not hear me 
knock ?” 

Mrs. Powell would not have allowed 
herself to be betrayed into any thing so 
vulgar as an abbreviation by the tor- 
ments of the rack; and would have 
neatly rounded her periods while the 
awful wheel was stretching every muscle 
of her agonised frame, and the execu- 
tioner waiting to give the coup de 
grace. 

“Did you not hear me knock ?” she 
asked. 

“No,” said Aurora; “you didn’t 
knock I Did you ?” 

Mrs. Mellish made an alarming pause 
between the two sentences. 

“Oh, yes, too-wice,” answered Mrs. 
Powell, with as much emphasis as was 
consistent with gentility upon the elon- 
gated word; “ I knocked too-wice ; but 
you seemed so very. much preoccupied 
that — ” 

“ I didn’t hear you, ’’’interrupted Au- 
rora ; “you should knock rather louder 
when you vmnt people to hear, Mrs. 
Powell. I — I came here to look for 
John, and I shall stop and put away his 
guns. Careless fellow — he always leaves 
them lying about.” 

“ Shall I assist you, dear Mrs. Mel- 
lish ?” ■ 

“ Oh, no, thank you.” 

“But pray allow me — guns are so in- 
teresting. Indeed, there is very little 
either in art or nature which, properly 
considered, is not — ” 

“You had better find Mr. Mellish, 
and ascertain if the colonel does dine 
here, I think, Mrs. Powell,” interrupted 
Aurora, shutting the lids of the pistol- 
cases, and replacing them upon their ac- 
customed shelves. 

“Oh, if you wish to be alone, cer- 
tainly,” said the ensign’s widow, looking 


AUKORA FLOYD. 


162 

furtively at Aurora’s face bending over 
the breech-loading revolvers, and then 
walking genteelly and noislessly out of 
the room. 

“ Who was she talking to ?” thought 
Mrs. Powell. “I could hear her voice, 
but not the other person’s. I suppose 
it was Mr. Mellish ; and yet he is not 
generally so quiet.” 

She stopped to look out of a window 
in the corridor, and found the solution 
of her doubts in the shambling figure of 
the Softy making his way northwards, 
creeping stealthily under shadow of the 
plantation that bordered the lawn. Mrs. 
Powell’s faculties were all cultivated to 
a state of unpleasant perfection, and she 
was able, actually as well as figuratively, 
to see a great deal farther than most 
people. 

John Mellish was not to be found in 
the house, and on making inquiries of 
s6me of the servants, Mrs. Powell learnt 
that he had strolled up to the north 
lodge to see the trainer, who was con- 
fined to his bed. 

“ Indeed !” said the ensign’s widow ; 
“ then I think, as we really ought to 
know about the colonel and the mulli- 
gatawny, I will walk to the north lodge 
myself, and see Mr. Mellish.” 

She took a sun-umbrella from the 
stand in the hall, and crossed the lawn 
northwards at a smart pace, in spite of 
the heat of the July noontide. “If I 
can get there before Hargraves,” she 
thought, “ I may be able to find out 
why he came to the house.” 

The ensign’s widow did reach the 
lodge before Stephen Hargraves, who 
stopped, as we know, under shelter of 
the foliage, in the loneliest pathway of 
the wood to decipher Aurora’s scrawl. 
She found John Mellish seated with the 
trainer, in the little parlor of the lodge, 
discussing the stable arrangement ; the 
master talking with considerable anima- 
tion, the servant listening with a listless 
nonchalance which had a certain air of 
depreciation, not to say contempt, for 
poor John’s racing stud. Mr. Conyers 
had risen from his bed at the sound of 
his employer’s voice in the little room 
below, and had put on a dusty shooting- 
coat and a pair of shabby slippers, in 
order to come down and hear W'hat 
Mr. Mellish had to say. 

“ I’m sorry to hear you’re ill, Con- 


yers,” John said heartily, with a fresh- 
ness in his strong voice which seemed to 
carry health and strength in its every 
tone; “as you weren’t well enough to 
look in at the house, I thought I’d come 
over here and talk to you about busi- 
ness. I want to know whether we 
ought to take Monte Christo out of his 
York engagement, and if you think it 
would be wise to let Northern Dutch- 
man take his chance for the Great 
Ebor. Hey ?” 

Mr. Mellish’s query resounded through 
the small room, and made the languid 
trainer shudder. Mr. Conyers had all 
the peevish susceptibility to discomfort 
or inconvenience which go to make a 
man above his station. Is it a merit to 
be above one’s station, I wonder, that 
people make such a boast of their unfit- 
ness for honest employments, and sturdy 
but progressive labor. The flowers, in 
the fables, that want to be trees always 
get the worst of it, I remember. Per- 
haps that is because they can do nothing 
but complain. There is no objection to 
their growing into trees, if they can, I 
suppose ; but a great objection to their 
being noisy and disagreeable because 
they can’t. With the son of the simple 
Corsican advocate who made himself 
Emperor of France the world had every 
sympathy ; but wdth poor Louis Phi- 
lippe, w'ho ran away from a throne at 
the first shock that disturbed its equi- 
librium, I fear, very little. Is it quite 
right to be angry with the world be- 
cause it worships success ; for is not 
success, in some manner, the stamp of 
divinity ? Self-assertion may deceive 
the ignorant for a time ; but when the 
noise dies aw’ay, we cut open the drum, 
and find that it was emptiness that 
made the music. Mr. Conyers contented 
himself with declaring that he w^alked 
on a road which was un^vorthy of his 
footsteps; but as he never contrived to 
get an inch farther upon the great high- 
way *of life, there is some reason to sup- 
pose that he had his opinion entirely to 
himself. Mr. Mellish and his trainer 
were still discussing stable matters when 
Mrs. Ppwell reached the north lodge. 
She stopped for a few minutes in the 
rustic doorway, waiting for a pause in 
the conversation. She w^as too well- 
bred to interrupt Mr. Mellish in his 
talk, and there was a chance that she 
\ 


AURORA FLOYD. 


might hear something by lingering. No 
contrast could be stronger than that 
presented by the two men. John, 
broad-shouldered and stalwart ; his short 
crisp chestnut hair brushed away from 
his square forehead; his bright open 
blue eyes beaming honest sunshine upon 
all they looked at; his loose gray clothes 
neat and well-made ; his shirt in the 
first freshness of the morning^s toilet; 
every thing about him made beautiful 
by the easy grace which is the peculiar 
property of the man who has been born 
a gentleman, and which neither all the 
cheap finery which Mr. Moses can sell, 
nor all the expensive absurdities which 
Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse can buy, will 
ever bestow upon the parvenu or the 
vulgarian. The trainer, handsomer than 
his master by as much as Antinous 
in Grecian marble is handsomer than 
the substantially-shod and loose-coated 
young squires in Mr. Millaises designs ; 
as handsome as it is possible for this 
human clay to be, with every feature 
moulded to the highest type of positive 
beauty, and yet, every inch of him, a 
boor. His shirt soiled and crumpled, 
his hair rough and uncombed ; his un- 
shaven chin, dark with the blue bristles 
of his budding beard, and smeared with 
the traces of last night’s liquor ; his 
dingy hands, supporting his dingy chin, 
and his elbows bursting half out of the 
frayed sleeves of his shabby shooting- 
jacket, leaning on the table in an atti- 
tude of indifferent insolence. His coun- 
tenance expressive of nothing but dis- 
satisfaction with bis own lot, and con- 
tempt for the opinions of other people. 
All the homilies that could be preached 
upon the time-worn theme of beauty 
and its worthlessness, could never argue 
so strongly as this mute evidence pre- 
sented by Mr. Conyers himself in his 
slouching posture and his unkempt hair. 
Is beauty, then, so little, one asks, on 
looking at the trainer and his employer? 
Is it better to be clean, and well-dressed, 
and gentlemanly, than to have a classi- 
cal profile and a thrice-worn shirt ? 

Finding very little to interest her in 
John’s stable-talk, Mrs. Powell made 
her presence known, and once more 
asked the all-important question about 
Colonel Maddison. 

“ Yes,” John answered ; “ the old boy 


163 

is sure to come. Let’s have plenty of 
chutnee, and boiled rice, and preserved 
ginger, and all the rest of the unpleasant 
things that Indian officers live upon. 
Have you seen Lolly ?” 

Mr. Mellish put on his hat, gave a 
last instruction to the trainer, and left 
the cottage. 

“ Have you seen Lolly ?” he asked 
again. 

“Ye-es,” replied Mrs. Powell; “I 
have only lately left Mrs. Mellish in your 
room ; she had been speaking to that 
half-witted person — Hargraves, I think 
he is called.” 

“Speaking to hiniV^ cried John; 
“speaking to him in my room ? Why, 
the fellow is forbidden to cross the 
threshold of the house, and Mrs. Mellish 
abominates the sight of him. Don’t you 
remember the day he flogged her dog, 
you know, and Lolly horse — had hys- 
terics ?” added Mr. Mellish, choking 
himself with one word and substituting 
another. 

“Oh, yes, I remember that little — 
ahem — unfortunate occurrence perfect- 
ly,” replied Mrs. Powell, in a tone which, 
in spite of its amiability, implied that 
Aurora’s escapade was not a thing to be 
easily forgotten. 

“ Then it’s not likely, you know, that 
Lolly would talk to the man. You 
must be mistaken, Mrs. Powell.” 

The ensign’s widow simpered and 
lifted her eyebrows, gently shaking her 
head, with a gesture that seemed to say, 
“ Did you ever find me mistaken ?” 

“No, no, my dear Mr. Mellish,” she 
said, with a half-playful air of conviction, 
“ there was no mistake on my part. 
Mrs. Mellish was talking to the half- 
witted person ; but you know the person 
is a sort of servant to Mr. Conyers, and 
Mrs. Mellish may have had a message 
for Mr. Conyers.” 

“A message for himV^ roared John, 
stopping suddenly and planting his stick 
upon the ground in a movement of 
unconcealed passion ; “ what messages 
should she have for him ? Why should 
she want people fetching and carrying 
between her and him ?” 

Mrs. Powell’s pale eyes lit up with a 
faint yellow flame in their greenish pupils 
as John broke out thus. “ It is coming 
— it is coming — it is coming I” her en- 


164 


AURORA FLOYD. 


vious heart cried, and she felt that a 
faint flush of triumph was gathering in 
her sickly cheeks. 

But in another moment John Mellish 
recovered his self-command. He was 
angry with himself for that transient 
passion. . “Am I going to doubt her 
again he thought. “ Do I know so 
little of the nobility of her generous soul 
that I am ready to listen to every whis- 
per, and terrify myself with every look 

They had walked about a hundred 
yards away from the lodge by this time. 
John turned irresolutely, as if half in- 
clined to go back. 

“A message for Conyers,^^ he said to 
Mrs. Powell ; “ay, ay, to be sure. It’s 
likely enough she might want to send 
him a message, for she’s cleverer at all 
the stable business than I am. It was 
she who told me not to enter Cherry 
Stone for the Chester Cup, and, egad, I 
was obstinate, and I was licked ; as I 
deserved to be, for not listening to my 
dear girl.” 

Mrs. Powell would fain have boxed 
John’s ear, had she been tall enough 
to reach that organ. Infatuated fool I 
would he never open his dull eyes and 
see the ruin that was preparing for him ? 

“You are a good husband, Mr. Mel- 
lish,” she said, with gentle melancholy. 
“Your wife ought to be happy!” she 
added, with a sigh which plainly hinted 
that Mrs. Mellish was miserable. 

“ A good husband I” cried John, “ not 
half good enough for her. What can I 
do to prove that I love her ? What can 
I do ? Nothing, except to let her have 
her own way ; and what a little that 
seems ! Why, if she wanted to set that 
house on fire, for the pleasure of making 
a bonfire,” he added, pointing to the 
rambling mansion in which his blue eyes 
had first seen the light, “ I’d let her do 
it, and look on with her at the blaze.” 

“Are you going back to the lodge ?” 
Mrs. Powell asked quietly, not taking 
any notice of this outbreak of marital 
enthusiasm. 

They had retraced their steps, and 
were within a few paces of the little gar- 
den before the north lodge. 

“Going back?” said John; “no — 
yes.” 

Between his utterance of the negative 
and the affirmative he had looked up, 
and seen Stephen Hargraves entering 


the little garden-gate. The Softy had 
come by the short cut through the wood. 
John Mellish quickened his pace, and 
followed Steeve Hargraves across the 
little garden to the threshold of the 
door. At the threshold he paused. The 
rustic porch was thickly screened by the 
spreading branches of the roses and 
honeysuckle, and John was unseen by 
those within. He did not himself de- 
liberately listen ; he only waited for a 
few moments, wondering what to do 
next. In those few moments of inde- 
cision he heard the trainer speak to his 
attendant : 

“Did you see her?” he asked. 

“Ay, sure, I see her.” 

“ And she gave you a message ?” 

“No, she gave me this here.” 

“A letter I” cried the trainer’s eager 
voice; “give it me.” 

John Mellish heard the tearing of the 
envelope and the crackling of the crisp 
paper ; and knew that his wife had been 
writing to his servant. He clenched his 
strong right hand until the nails dug 
into the muscular palm ; then turning to 
Mrs. Powell, who stood close behind 
him, simpering meekly, as she would 
have simpered at an earthquake, or a 
revolution, or any other national calam- 
ity not peculiarly affecting herself, he 
said quietly : 

“ Whatever directions Mrs. Mellish 
has given are sure to be right ; I won’t 
interfere with them.” He walked away 
from the north lodge as he spoke, look- 
ing straight before him, homewards ; as 
if the unchanging lode-star of his honest 
heart were beckoning to him across the 
dreary Slough of Despond, and bidding 
him take comfort. 

“ Mrs. Powell,” he said, turning rather 
sharply upon the ensign’s widow, “I 
should be very sorry to say any thing 
likely to offend you, in your character 
of — of a guest beneath my roof ; but I 
shall take it as a favor to myself if you 
will be so good as to remember that I 
require no information respecting my 
wife’s movements from you, or from any 
one. Whatever Mrs. Mellish does, she 
does with my full consent, my perfect 
approbation. Csesar’s wife must not be 
suspected, and by Jove, ma’am — you’ll 
pardon the expression — John Mellish’s 
wife must not be watched.” 

“Watched! information I” exclaimed 


AURORA FLOYD. 


Mrs. Powell, lifting her pale eyebrows 
to the extreme limits allowed by nature. 

My dear Mr. Mellish, when I really 
only casually remarked, in reply to a 
question of your own, that I believed 
Mrs. Mellish had — ” 

“Oh, yes,” answered John, “ I under- 
stand. There are several ways by which 
you can go to Doncaster from this house. 
You can go across the fields, or round 
by llarper^s Common, an out-of-the- 
way, roundabout route, but you get 
there all the same, you know, ma’am. I 
generally prefer the high road. It 
mayn’t be the shortest way, perhaps ; 
but it’s certainly the straightest.” 

The corners of Mrs. Powell’s thin 
lower lip dropped, perhaps the eighth 
of an inch, as John made these observa- 
tions ; but she very quickly recovered 
her habitually genteel simper, and told 
Mr. Mellish that he really had such a 
droll way of expressing himself as to 
make his meaning scarcely so clear as 
could be wished. 

But John had said all that he wanted 
to say, and walked steadily onwards ; 
looking always towards that quarter in 
which the pole-star might be supposed 
to shine, guiding him back to his home. 

That home so soon to be desolate I 
With such ruin brooding above it as in 
his darkest doubts, his wildest fears, he 
had never shadowed forth. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

ON THE THRESHOLD OP DARKER 
MISERIES. 

John went straight to his own apart- 
ment to look for his wife ; but he found 
the guns put back in their usual places, 
and the room empty. Aurora’s maid, a 
smartly-dressed girl, came tripping out 
of the servants’ hall, where the rattling 
of knives and forks announced that a 
very substantial dinner was being done 
substantial justice to, to answer John’s 
eager inquiries. She told him that Mrs. 
Mellish had complained of a headache, 
and had gone to her own room to lie 
down. John went up-stairs, and crept 
cautiously along the carpeted corridor, 
fearful of every footfall which might 


165 

break the repose of his wife. The door 
of her dressing-room was ajar ; he push- 
ed it softly open, and went in. Aurora 
was lying upon the sofa, wrapped in a 
loose white dressing-gown, her masses 
of ebon hair uncoiled and falling about 
her shoulders in serpentine tresses, that 
looked like shining blue-black snakes 
released from poor Medusa’s head to 
make their escape amid the folds of 
her garments. Heaven knows what a 
stranger sleep may have been for many 
a night to Mrs. Mellish’s pillow; but 
she had fallen into a heavy slumber on 
this hot summer’s day. Her cheeks 
were flushed with a feverish crimson, 
and one small hand lay under her head 
twisted in the tangled masses of her 
glorious hair. 

John bent over her with a tender 
smile. 

“Poor girl,” he thought; “thank 
God that she can sleep, in spite of the 
miserable secrets which have come be- 
tween us. Talbot Bulstrode left her 
because he could not bear the agony 
that I am suffering now. What cause 
had he to doubt her ? What cause com- 
pared to that which I have had a fort- 
night ago — the other night — this morn- 
ing ? And yet — and yet I trust her, 
and will trust her, please God, to the 
very end.” 

He seated himself in a low easy-chair 
close beside the sofa upon which his 
sleeping wife lay, and resting his head 
upon his arm, watched her, thought of 
her, perhaps prayed for her ; and after 
a little while fell asleep himself, snoring 
in bass harmony with Aurora s regular 
breathing. He slept and snored, this 
horrible man, in the hour of his trouble, 
and behaved himself altogether in a 
manner most unbecoming in a hero. 
But then he is not a hero. He is stout 
and strongly built, with a fine broad 
chest, and unromantically robust health. 
There is more chance of his dying of 
apoplexy than of fading gracefully in a 
decline, or breaking a blood-vessel in a 
moment of intense emotion. He sleeps 
calmly, with the warm July air floating 
in upon him from the open window, 
and comforting him with its balmy 
breath, and he fully enjoys that rest of 
body and mind. Yet even in his tran- 
quil slumber there is a vague something, 
some lingering shadow of the bitter 


166 


AURORA FLOYD. 


memories which sleep has put away 
from him, that fills his breast with a 
dull pain, an oppressive heaviness, which 
cannot be shaken off. He slept until 
half-a-dozen different clocks in the ram- 
bling old house had come to one con- 
clusion, and declared it to be five in the 
afternoon ; and he awoke with a start, 
to find his wife watching him. Heaven 
knows how intently, with her black eyes 
filled with solemn thought, and a strange 
earnestness in her face. 

“ My poor John,” she said, bending 
her beautiful head and resting her burn- 
ing forehead upon his hand, “ how tired 
you must have been to sleep so soundly 
in the middle of the day I I have been 
awake for nearly an hour watching 
you.” 

“ Watching me, Lolly — why 

“ And thinking how good you are to 
me. Oh, John, John I what can I ever 
do — what can I ever do to atone to you 
for all—” 

“Be happy, Aurora,” he said huskily, 
“be happy, and — and send that man 
away.” 

“I will, John; he shall go soon, 
dear, — to-night I” 

“ What ! then that letter was to dis- 
miss him ?” asked Mr. Mellish. 

“ You know that I wrote to him ?” 

“Yes, darling, it was to dismiss him, 
— say that it was so, Aurora. Pay him 
what money you like, to keep the secret 
that he discovered, but send him away, 
Lolly, send him away. The sight of him 
is hateful to me. Dismiss him, Aurora, 
or I must do so myself.” 

He rose in his passionate excitement, 
but Aurora laid her land softly upon his 
arm. 

“ Leave all to me,” she said quietly. 
“ Believe me that I will act for the best. 
For the best, at least, if you couldn’t 
bear to lose me ; and you couldn’t bear 
that, could you, John ?” 

“ Lose you I My God, Aurora, why 
do you say such things to me ? I 
wouldn't lose you. Do you hear, Lolly ? 
I wouldn't I’d follow you to the farthest 
end of the universe, and Heaven take 
pity upon those that came between 
us.” 

His set teeth, the fierce light in his 
eyes, and the iron rigidity of his mouth, 
gave an emphasis to his words which 


my pen could never give if I used every 
epithet in the English language. 

Aurora rose from her sofa, and twist- 
ing her hair into a thickly-rolled mass at 
the back of her head, seated herself near 
the window, and pushed back the Yene- 
tian shutter. 

“These people dine here to-day, 
John ?” she asked listlessly. 

“ The Lofthouses and Colonel Maddi- 
son ? Yes, my darling ; and it’s ever 
so much past five. Shall I ring for your 
afternoon cup of tea ?” 

“ Yes, dear, and take some with me, 
if you will.” 

I’m afraid that in his inmost heart 
Mr. Mellish did not cherish any very 
great affection for the decoctions of 
bohea and gunpowder with which his 
wife dosed him ; but he would have 
dined upon cod-liver oil had she served 
the banquet, and he strung his nerves 
to their extreme tension at her supreme 
pleasure, and affected to highly relish 
the post-meridian dishes of tea which 
his wife poured out for him in the sacred 
seclusion of her dressing-room. 

Mrs. Powell heard the comfortable 
sound of the chinking of the thin egg- 
shell china and the rattling of the 
spoons, as she passed the half-open door 
on her way to her own apartment, and 
was mutely furious as she thought that 
love and harmony reigned within the 
chamber where the husband and wife 
sat at tea. 

Aurora went down to the drawing- 
room an hour after this, gorgeous 
in maize-colored silk and voluminous 
flouncings of black lace, wdth her hair 
plaited in a diadem upon her head, and 
fastened with three diamond stars w'hich 
John had bought for her in the Rue de 
la Paix, and which were cunningly fixed 
upon wire springs, which caused them 
to vibrate, with every chance movement 
of her beautiful head. You will say, 
perhaps, that she was arrayed too 
gaudily for the reception of an old In- 
dian officer and a country clergyman 
and his wife ; but if she loved handsome 
dresses better than simpler attire, it was 
from no taste for display, but rather 
from an innate love of splendor and 
expenditure, which was a part of her 
expansive nature. She had always been 
taught to think of herself as Miss 


AURORA FLOYD. 


Floyd, the banker’s daughter, and she 
had been taught also to spend money as 
a duty which she owed to society. 

Mrs. Lofthouse was a pretty little 
woman, with a pale face and hazel eyes. 
She was the youngest daughter of Col- 
onel Maddison, and was, “ By birth, 
you know, my dear, far superior to poor 
Mrs. Mellish, who, in spite of her wealth, 
is only, &c., &c., &c.,” as Margaret Loft- 
house remarked to her female acquaint- 
ance. She could not very easily forget 
that her father was the younger brother 
of a baronet, and had distinguished 
himself in some terrific manner by blood- 
thirsty demolition of Sikhs, far away in 
the untractable East ; and she thought 
it rather hard that Aurora should possess 
such cruel advantages through some 
pettifogging commercial genius on the 
part of her Glasgow ancestors. 

But as it was impossible for honest 
people to know Aurora without loving 
her, Mrs. Lofthouse heartily forgave her 
her fifty thousand pounds, and declared 
her to be the dearest darling in the wide 
world ; while Mrs. Mellish freely re- 
turned her friendliness, and caressed the 
little woman as she had caressed Lucy 
Bulstrode, with a superb yet affection- 
ate condescension, such as Cleopatra 
may have had for her handmaidens. 

The dinner went off pleasantly enough. 
Colonel Maddison attacked the side- 
dishes specially provided for him, and 
praised the Mellish Park cook. Mr. 
Lofthouse explained to Aurora the 
plan of a new schoolhouse which Mrs. 
Mellish was going to build for her hus- 
band’s parish. She listened patiently to 
the rather wearisome details, in which a 
bakehouse and a washhouse and a Tudor 
chimney seemed the leading features. 
She had heard so much of this before ; 
for there was scarcely a church, or a 
hospital, or model lodging-house, or a 
refuge for any misery or destitution 
whatever that had been lately elevated 
to adorn this earth, for which the 
banker’s daughter had not helped to 
pay. But her heart was wide enough 
for them all, and she was always glad to 
bear of the bakehouse and washhouse 
and the Tudor chimney all over again. 
If she was a little less interested upon 
this occasion than usual, Mr. Lofthouse 
did not observe her inattention, for in 
the simple earnestness of his own mind I 


167 

he thought it scarcely possible that the 
schoolhouse topic could fail to be 
interesting. Nothing is so difficult as 
to make people understand that you 
don’t care for what they themselves 
especially affect. John Mellish could 
not believe that the entries for the 
Great Ebor were not interesting to Mr. 
Lofthouse, and the country clergyman 
was fully convinced that the details of 
his philanthropic schemes for the regen- 
eration of his parish could not be other- 
wise than delightful to his host. But 
the master of Mellish Park was very 
silent, and sat with his glass in his hand 
looking across the dinner-table and Mrs. 
Lofthouse’s head at the sun-lit tree-tops 
between the lawn and the north lodge. 
Aurora, from her end of the table, saw 
that gloomy glance, and a resolute sha- 
dow darkened her face, expressive of the 
strengthening of some rooted purpose 
deep hidden in her heart. She sat so 
long at dessert, with her eyes fixed upon 
an apricot in her plate, and the shadow 
upon her face deepened every moment, 
that poor Mrs. Lofthouse was in utter 
despair of getting the significant look 
which was to release her from the bond- 
age of hearing her father’s stories of 
tiger-shooting and pig-sticking for the 
two or three hundredth time. Perhaps 
she never would have got that feminine 
signal had not Mrs. Powell, with a little 
significant “ hem,” made some observa- 
tion about the sinking sun. 

The ensign’s widow w^as one of those 
people who declare that there is a per- 
ceptible difference in the length of the 
days upon the twenty-third or twenty- 
fourth of June, and who go on announc- 
ing the same fact until the long winter 
evenings come with the twenty-first of 
December, and it is time for them to de- 
clare the converse of their late proposi- 
tion. It was some remark of this kind 
that aroused Mrs. Mellish from her rev- 
erie, and caused her to start up suddenly, 
quite forgetful of the conventional sim- 
pering beck to her guest. 

“Past eight I” she said, “no, it’s 
surely not so late ?” 

“ Yes, it is, Lolly,” John Mellish an- 
swered, looking at his watch j “ a quar- 
ter past.” 

“ Indeed I I beg your pardon, Mrs. 
Lofthouse ; shall we go into the draw- 
ing-room ?” 


168 


AUROKA FLOYD. 


Yes, dear, do,” said the clergyman’s 
wife, “ and let’s have a nice chat. Papa 
will drink too much claret if-Jie tells the 
big-sticking stories,” she added in a con- 
fidential whisper. Ask your dear, 
kind husband not to let him have too 
much claret ; because he’s sure to suffer 
with his liver to-morrow, and say that 
Lofthouse ought to have restrained him. 
He always says that it’s poor Reginald’s 
fault for not restraining him.” 

John looked anxiously after his wife, 
as he stood with the door in his hand, 
while the three ladies crossed the hall. 
He bit his lip as he noticed Mrs. Pow- 
ell’s unpleasantly precise figure close 
at Aurora’s shoulder. 

“ I think I spoke pretty plainly, 
though, this morning,” he thought, as 
he closed the door and returned to his 
friends. 

A quarter past eight; twenty minutes 
past ; five-and-twenty minutes past. 
Mrs. Lofthouse was rather a brilliant 
pianist, and was never happier than 
when interpreting Thalberg and Bene- 
dict upon her friends’ Collard and Col- 
lards. There were old-fashioned people 
round Doncaster who believed in Collard 
and Collards, and were thankful for the 
melody to be got out of a good honest 
grand, in a solid rosewood case, una- 
dorned with carved glorification, or 
ormolu fret-work. At seven-and-twenty 
minutes past eight Mrs. Lofthouse was 
seated at Aurora’s piano, in the first 
agonies of a prelude in six flats ; a pre- 
lude which demanded such extraordinary 
uses of the left hand across the right, 
and the right over the left, and such ex- 
ercise of the thumbs in all sorts of posi- 
tions, — in which, according to all ortho- 
dox theories of the pre-Thalbergite 
school, no pianist’s thumbs should ever 
be used, — that Mrs. Mellish felt that 
her friend’s attention was not very likely 
to wander from the keys. 

Within the long, low-roofed drawing- 
room at Mellish there was a snug little 
apartment, hung with innocent rose-bud 
sprinkled chintzes, and furnished with 
maple-wood chairs and tables. Mrs. 
Lofthouse had not been seated at the 
piano more than five minutes when Au- 
rora strolled from the drawing-room to 
this inner chamber, leaving her guest 
with no audience but Mrs. Powell. She 
lingered for a moment on the threshold 


to look back at the ensign’s widow, who 
sat near the piano in an attitude of rapt 
attention. 

“ She is watching me,” thought Au- 
rora, “though her pink eyelids are 
drooping over her eyes, and she seems 
to be looking at the border of her 
pocket-handkerchief. She sees me with 
her chin or her nose, perhaps. How do 
I know ? She is all eyes I Bah ! am I 
going to be afraid of her, when I was 
never afraid of What should I 

fear except — ” her head changed from 
its defiant attitude to a drooping posture, 
and a sad smile curved her crimson lips, 
— “except to make you unhappy, my 
dear, my husband. Yes,” with a sudden 
lifting of her head, and re-assumption 
of its proud defiance, “my own true hus- 
band ; the husband who has kept his 
marriage-vow as unpolluted as when first 
it issued from his lips I” 

I am writing what she thought, remem- 
ber, not what she said; for she was not in 
the habit of thinking aloud, nor did I ever 
know any body who was. 

Aurora took up a shawl that she had 
flung upon the sofa, and threw it lightly 
over her head, veiling herself with a 
cloud of black lace, through which the 
restless, shivering diamonds shone out 
like stars in a midnight sky. She looked 
like Hecate, as she stood on the thres- 
hold of the French window lingering for 
a moment, with a deep laid purpose in 
her heart, and a resolute light in her 
eyes. The clock in tne steeple of the 
village-church struck the three-quarters 
after eight while she lingered for those 
few moments. As the last chime died 
away in the summer air, she looked up 
darkly at the evening sky, and walked 
with a rapid footstep out upon the lawn 
towards the southern end of the wood 
that bordered the park. 


CHAPTER XXIY. 

CAPTAIN PRODDER CARRIES BAD NEWS 
TO HIS niece’s house. 

While Aurora stood upon the thres- 
hold of the open window, a man was 
lingering upon the broad stone steps be- 
fore the door of the entrance-hall, re- 


AURORA FLOYD. 


monstrating with one of John Mellish’s 
servants, who held supercilious parley 
with the intruder, and kept him at arm’s 
length with the contemptuous indiffer- 
ence of a well-bred servant. 

The stranger was Captain Samuel 
Prodder, who had arrived at Doncaster 
late in the afternoon, had dined at the 
“ Reindeer,” and had come over to 
Mellish Park in a gig driven by a 
hanger-on of that establishment. The 
gig and the hanger-on were both in 
waiting at the bottom of the steps ; and 
if there had been any thing wanting to 
turn the balance of the footman’s con- 
tempt for Captain Prodder’s blue coat, 
loose shirt-collar, and silver watch-chain, 
the gig from the “ Reindeer” would have 
done it. 

“ Yes, Mrs. Mellish is at home,” the 
gentleman in plush replied, after sur- 
veying the sea-captain with a leisurely 
and critical air, which was rather pro- 
voking to poor Samuel ; “ but she’s en- 
gaged.” 

“Rut perhaps she’ll put off her en- 
gagements for a bit when she heafs who 
it is as wants to see her,” answered the 
captain, diving into his capacious pocket. 
“ She’ll tell a different story, I dare say, 
when you take her that bit of paste- 
board.” 

He handed the man a card, or rather 
let me say a stiff square of thick paste- 
board, inscribed* with his name, so dis- 
guised by the flourishing caprices Of the 
engraver as to be not very easily deci- 
phered by unaccustomed eyes. The card 
bore Captain Prodder’s address as well 
as his name, and informed his acquaint- 
ances that he was part-owner of the 
Nancy Jane, and that all consignments 
of goods were to be made to him at, 
Ac., &c. 

The footman took the document be- 
tween his thumb and finger, and exam- 
ined it as minutely as if it had been some 
relic of the Middle Ages. A new light 
dawned upon him as he deciphered the 
information about the Nancy Jane, and 
he looked at the captain for the first 
time with some approach to human in- 
terest in his countenance. 

“ Is it cigars you want to dispose 
hoflf?” he asked, “or bandannas? If 
it’s cigars, you might come round to our 
’all, and show us the harticle.” 

“ Cigars 1” roared Samuel Prodder. 


169 

“ Do you take me for a smuggler, 
you — ?” Here followed one of those 
hearty seafaring epithets with which po- 
lite Mr. Chucks was apt to finish his 
speeches. “ I’m your missus’s own un- 
cle ; leastways, I — I knew her mother 
when she was a little gal,” he added in 
considerable confusion ; for he remem- 
bered how far away his sea-captainship 
thrust him from Mrs. Mellish and her 
well-born husband; “so just take her 
my card, and look sharp about it, will 
you ?” 

“ We’ve a dinner-party,” the footman 
said coldly, “ and I don’t know if the 
ladies have returned to the drawing- 
room ; but if you’re anyways related to 
missis — I’ll go and see.” 

The man strolled leisurely away, leav- 
ing poor Samuel biting his nails in mute 
vexation at having let slip that ugly fact 
of her relationship. 

“ That swab in the same cut coat as 
Lord Nelson wore aboard the Victory, 
will look down upon her now he knows 
she’s niece to a old sea-captain that car- 
ries dry goods on commission, and can’t 
keep his tongue between his teeth,” he 
thought. 

The footman came back while Samuel 
Prodder was upbraiding himself for his 
folly, and informed him that Mrs. Mel- 
lish was not to be found in the house. 

“Who’s that playin’ upon the pianer, 
then ?” asked Mr. Prodder, with scep- 
tical bluntness. 

“ Oh, that’s the clugyman’s wife,” 
answered the man contemptuously ; “ a 
ciddyvong guyness, I should think, for 
she plays too well for a real lady. Missus 
don’t play — leastways only pawlkers, 
and that sort of think. Good night.” 

He closed the two half-glass doors 
upon Captain Prodder without further 
ceremony, and shut Samuel out of his 
niece’s house. 

“To think that I played hopscotch 
and swapped marbles for hard-bake with 
this gal’s mother,” thought the captain, 
“ and that her servant turns up his nose 
at me and shuts the door in my face I” 

It was in sorrow rather than in anger 
that the disappointed sailor thought this. 
He had scarcely hoped for any thing 
better. It was only natural that those 
about his niece should flout at and con- 
temptuously entreat him. Let him get 
to her — let him come only for a moment 


170 


AURORA FLOYD. 


face to face with Eliza’s child, and he 
did not fear the issue. 

“I’ll walk through the park,” he said 
to the man who had driven him from 
Doncaster; “it’s a nice evenin’, and 
there’s pleasant walks under the trees to 
win’ard. You can drive back into the 
high road, and wait for me agen that 
’ere turnstile I took notice of as we come 
along.” 

The driver nodded, smacked his whip, 
and drove his elderly gray pony to- 
wards the park-gates. Captain Samuel 
Prodder went, slowly and deliberately 
enough, — the way that it was appointed 
for him to go. The park was a strange 
territory to him ; but while driving past 
the outer boundaries he had looked ad- 
miringly at chance openings in the wood, 
revealing grassy amphitheatres enriched 
by spreading oaks, whose branches made 
a shadowy tracery upon the sun-lit turf. 
He had looked with a seaman’s wonder 
at the inland beauties of the quiet do- 
main, and had pondered whether it might 
not be a pleasant thing for an old sailor 
to end his days amid sucli monotonous 
woodland tranquillity, far away from the 
sound of wreck and tempest, and the 
mighty voices of the dreadful deep ; 
and, in his disappointment at not seeing 
Aurora, it was some consolation to the 
captain to walk across the dewy grass 
in the evening shadows in the direction 
where, with a sailor’s unerring topo- 
graphical instinct, he knew the turnstile 
must be situated. 

Perhaps he had some hope of meeting 
bis niece in the pathway across the park. 
The man had told him that she was out. 
She could not be far away, as there was 
a dinner-party at the house ; and she 
w'as scarcely likely to leave her guests. 
She was wandering about the park most 
likely with some of them. 

The shadows of the trees grew darker 
upon the grass as Captain Prodder drew 
nearer to the wood ; but it was that sweet 
summer time in which there is scarcely 
one positively dark hour amongst the 
twenty-four; and though the village- 
clock chimed the half-hour after nine as 
the sailor entered the wood, he was able 
to distinguish the outlines of two figures 
advancing towards him from the other 
end of the long arcade, that led in a 
slanting direction to the turnstile. 

The figures were those of a man and 


woman : the w'oman wearing some light- 
colored dress, which shimmered in the 
dusk ; the man leaning on a stick, and 
obviously very lame. 

“ Is it my niece and one of her visit- 
ors ?” thought the captain ; “ maybe it 
is. I’ll lay by to port of ’em, and let 
’em pass me. ’ 

Samuel Prodder stepped aside under 
the shadow of the trees to the left of 
the grassy avenue through which the 
two figures were approaching, and waited 
patiently until they drew near enough 
for him to distinguish the woman’s face. 
The woman was Mrs. Mellish, and she 
was walking on the left of the man, and 
was therefore nearest to the captain. 
Her head was turned away from her 
companion, as if in utter scorn and de- 
fiance of him, although she was talking 
to him at that moment. Her face, proud, 
pale, and disdainful, was visible to the 
seaman in the chill, shadowy light of the 
newly-risen moon. A low line of crimson 
behind the black trunks of a distant 
group of trees marked where the sun had 
left its last track, in a vivid streak that 
looked like blood. 

Captain Prodder gazed in loving won- 
der at the beautiful face turned towards 
him. He saw the dark eyes, with their 
sombre depth, dark in anger and scorn, 
and the luminous shimmer of the jewels 
that shone through the black veil upon 
herr haughty head. He saw her, and his 
heart grew chill at the sight of her pale 
beauty in the mysterious moonlight. 

“It might be my sister’s ghost,” he 
thought, “ coming upon me in this quiet 
place ; it’s a’most difficult to believe as 
it’s flesh and blood.” 

He would have advanced, perhaps, 
and addressed his niece, had he not been 
held back by the words which she was 
speaking as she passed him — words that 
jarred painfully upon his heart, telling, 
as they did, of anger and bitterness, dis- 
cord and misery. 

“Yes, hate you,” she said in a clear 
voice, which seemed to vibrate sharply 
in the dusk — “hate you, hate you, hate 
you!” She repeated the hard phrase, 
as if there were some pleasure and de- 
light in uttering it, which in her ungov- 
ernable anger she could not deny herself. 
“ What other words do you expect from 
me?” she cried, with a low mocking 
laugh, which had a tone of deeper misery 


AURORA FLOYD. 


171 


and more utter hopelessness than any 
outbreak of womanly weeping. “Would 
you have me love you ? or respect you ? 
or tolerate you ?” Her voice rose with 
each rapid question, merging into an 
hysterical sob, but never melting into 
tears. “Would you have me tell you 
any thing else than what I tell you to- 
night ? I hate and abhor you. I look 
upon you as the primary cause of every 
sorrow I have ever known, of every tear 
I have ever shed, of every humiliation I 
have endured ; every sleepless night, 
every weary day, every despairing hour, 
I have ever passed. More than this — 
yes, a thousand, thousand times more — 
I look upon you as the first cause of my 
father’s wretchedness. Yes, even before 
my own mad folly in believing in you, 
and thinking you — what ? — Claude Mel- 
notte, perhaps I — a curse upon the man 
who wrote the play, and the player who 
acted in it, if it helped to make me what 
I was when I met you I I say again, I 
hate you ; your presence poisons my 
home, your abhorred shadow haunts my 
sleep — no, not my sleep, for how should 
I ever sleep knowing that you are near ?” 

Mr. Conyers, being apparently weary 
of walking, leaned against the trunk of 
a tree to listen to the end of this out- 
break, looking insolent defiance at the 
speaker. But Aurora’s passion had 
reached that point in which all con- 
sciousness of external things passes'* 
away in the complete egotism of anger 
and hate. She did not see his super- 
ciliously indifferent look; her dilated 
eyes stared straight before her into the 
dark recess from which Captain Prodder 
watched his sister’s only child. Her 
restless hands rent the fragile border of 
her shawl in the strong agony of her 
passion. Have you ever seen this kind 
of woman in a passion ? Impulsive, 
nervous, sensitive, sanguine; with such 
an one passion is a madness — brief, 
thank Heaven I and expending itself in 
sharply cruel words, and convulsive rend- 
ings of lace and ribbon, or coroner’s 
juries might have to sit even oftener 
than they do. It is fortunate for man- 
kind that speaking daggers is often quite 
as great a satisfaction to us as using 
them, and that we can threaten very 
cruel things without meaning to carry 
them out. Like the little children who 
say, “ Won’t I just tell your mother ?” 


and the terrible editors who write, 
“Won’t I give you a castigation in the 
Market-Deeping Spirit of the Times, ov 
the Walton-on-the-Naze AthenceumV^ 

“If you are going to give us much 
more of this sort of thing,” said Mr. 
Conyers, with aggravating stolidity, 

“ perhaps you won’t object to my light- * 
ing a cigar ?” 

Aurora took no notice of his quiet 
insolence ; but Captain Prodder, invol- 
untarily clenching his fist, bounded a step 
forward in his retreat, and shook the 
leaves of the underwood about his legs. 

“ What’s that ?” exclaimed the trainer. 

“ My dog, perhaps,” answered Au- 
rora; “he’s about here with me.” 

“ Curse the purblind cur,” muttered 
Mr. Conyers, with an unlighted cigar in 
his mouth. He struck a lucifer-match 
against the back of a tree, and the vivid 
sulphurous light shone full upon his 
handsome face. 

“ A rascal,” thought Captain Prod- 
der; “ a good-looking, heartless scoun- 
drel. What’s this between my niece and 
him ? He isn’t her husband surely, for 
he don’t look like a gentleman. But if 
he ain’t her husband, who is he ?” 

The sailor scratched his head in his 
bewilderment. His senses had been al- 
most stupefied by Aurora’s passionate 
talk, and he had only a confused feeling 
that there was trouble and wretchedness 
of some kind or other around and about 
his niece. 

“If I thought he’d done any thing to 
injure her,” he muttered, “ I’d pound 
him into such a jelly that his friends 
would never know his handsome face 
again as long as there was life in his 
carcgss.” 

Mr. Conyers threw away the burning 
match, and puffed at his newly-lighted 
cigar. He did not trouble himself to 
take it from his lips as he addressed 
Aurora, but spoke between his teeth, and 
smoked in the pauses of his discourse. 

“ Perhaps, if you’ve — calmed yourself 
down — a bit,” he said, “you’ll be so 
good as — to come to business. What 
do you want me to do ?” 

“ You know as well as I do,” answered 
Aurora. 

“You want me to leave this place?’* 

“Yes; forever.” 

“ And to take what you give me — and 
be satisfied.” 


172 


AURORA FLOYD. 


“Yes.” 

“What if I refuse ?” 

She turned sharply upon him as he 
asked this question, and looked at him 
for a few moments in silence. 

“ What if I refuse he repeated, still 
smoking. 

“Look to yourself 1” she cried, be- 
tween her set teeth ; “that’s all. Look 
to yourself I” 

“ What 1 you’d kill me, I suppose ?” 

“No,” answered Aurora; “but I’d 
tell all ; and get the release which I 
ought to have sought for two years ago.” 

“ Oh, ah, to be sure,” said Mr. Con- 
yers; “a pleasant thing for Mr. Hellish 
and our poor papa, and a nice bit of 
gossip for the newspapers. I’ve a good 
mind to put you to the test, and see if 
you’ve pluck enough to do it, my lady.” 

She stamped her foot upon the turf, 
and tore the lace in her hands, throwing 
the fragments away from her ; but she 
did not answer him. 

“ You’d like to stab me, or shoot me, 
or strangle me, as I stand here, wouldn’t 
you, now ?” asked the trainer mockingly. 

“Yes,” cried Aurora, “I would 1” 
She flung her head back with a gesture 
of disdain as she spoke. 

“ Why do I waste my time in talking 
to you?” she said. “My worst words 
can inflict no wound upon such a nature 
as yours. My scorn is no more painful 
to you than it would be to any of the 
loathsome creatures that creep about 
the margin of yonder pool.” 

The trainer took his cigar from his 
mouth, and struck the ashes away with 
his little finger. 

“No,” he said, with a contemptuous 
laugh ; “ I’m not very thin-skinned ; 
and I’m pretty well used to this sort of 
thing, into the bargain. But suppose, 
as I remarked just now, we drop, this 
style of conversation, and come to busi- 
ness. We don’t seem to be getting on 
very fast this way.” 

At this juncture. Captain Prodder, 
who, in his extreme desire to strangle 
his niece’s companion, had advanced very 
close upon the two speakers, knocked 
off his hat against the lower branches 
of the tree which sheltered him. 

There was no mistake this time about 
the rustling of the leaves. The trainer 
started, and limped towards Captain 
Prodder’s hiding-place. 


“There’s some one listening. to us,” 
he said. “I’m sure of it this time, — 
that fellow Hargraves, perhaps. I fancy 
he’s a sneak.” 

Mr. Conyers supported himself against 
the very tree behind which the sailor 
stood, and beat amongst the under- 
growth with his stick, but did not suc- 
ceed in encountering the legs of the 
listener. 

“If that soft-headed fool is playing 
the spy upon me,” cried the trainer sav- 
agely, “he’d better not let me catch 
him, for I’ll make him remember it, if I 
do.” 

“Don’t I tell you that my dog fol- 
lowed me here?” exclaimed Aurora con- 
temptuously. 

A low rustling of the grass on the 
other side of the avenue, and at some 
distance from the seaman’s place of con- 
cealment, was heard as Mrs. Hellish 
spoke. 

“ That's your dog, if you like,” said 
the trainer ; “ the other was a man. 
Come on a little way further, and let’s 
make a finish of this business ; it’s past 
ten o’clock.” 

Mr. Conyers was right. The church 
clock had struck ten five minutes before, 
but the solemn chimes had fallen un- 
heeded upon Aurora’s ear, lost amid the 
angry voices raging in her breast. She 
started as she looked around her at the 
summer darkness in the woods, and the 
flaming yellow moon, which brooded low 
upon the earth, and shed no light upon 
the mysterious pathways and the water- 
pools in the wood. 

The trainer limped away, Aurora 
walking by his side, yet holding herself 
as far aloof from him as the grassy path- 
way would allow. They were out of 
hearing, and almost out of sight, before 
the sea-captain could emerge from a 
state of utter stupefaction so far as to be 
able to look at the business in its right 
bearings. 

“I ought to ha’ knocked him down,” 
he muttered at last, “ whether he’s her 
husband or whether he isn’t. I ought 
to have knocked him down, and I would 
have done it too,” added the captain 
resolutely, “if it hadn’t been that my 
niece seemed to have a good fiery spirit 
of her own, and to be able to fire a jolly 
good broadside in the way of hard 
1 words. I’ll find my scull-thatcher if I 


AUROEA FLOYD. 


173 


can,” said Captain Prodder, groping for 
his hat amongst the brambles and the 
long grass, “ and then I’ll just run up to 
the turnstile and tell my mate to lay at 
anchor a bit longer with the horse and 
shay. He’ll be wonderin’ what I’m up 
to ; but I won’t go back just yet, I’ll 
keep in the way of my niece and that 
swab with the game leg.” 

The captain found his hat, and walked 
down to the turnstile, where he found 
the young man from the “ Reindeer” 
fast asleep, with the reins loose in his 
hands, and his head upon his knees. 
The horse, with his head in an empty 
nose-bag, seemed as fast asleep as the 
driver. 

The young man woke at the sound of 
the turnstile creaking upon its axis, and 
the step of the sailor in the road. 

“ I ain’t goin’ to get aboard just yet,” 
said Captain Prodder ; “ I’ll take an- 
other turn in the wood as the evenin’s so 
pleasant. I come to tell you I wouldn’t 
keep you much longer, for I thought 
you’d think I was dead.” 

“ I did a’most,” answered the chariot- 
eer, candidly. “My word, ain’t you 
been a time I” 

“ I met Mr. and Mrs. Mellish in the 
wood,” said the captain, “ and I stopped 
to have a look at ’em. She’s a bit of a 
spitfire, ain’t she ?” asked Samuel, with 
ajffected carelessness. 

The young man from the “ Reindeer” 
shook his head dubiously. 

“ I doant kno\V about that,” he said ; 
“she’s a rare favorite hereabouts, with 
poor folks and gentry too. They do say 
as she horsewhipped a poor fond chap 
as they’d got in the stables, for ill-usin’ 
her dog; and sarve him right too,” 
added the young man decisively. “ Them 
softies is alius vicious.” 

Captain Prodder pondered rather 
doubtfully upon this piece of informa- 
tion. He was not particularly elated by 
the image of his sister’s child laying a 
horsewhip upon the shoulders of her 
half-witted servant. This trifling inci- 
dent didn’t exactly harmonize with his 
idea of the beautiful young heiress, 
playing upon all manner of instruments, 
and speaking half-a-dozen languages. 

“Yes,” repeated the driver, “they do 
say as she gave t’ fondy a good whop- 
ping ; and damme, if I don’t admire her 
for it.” 


“Ay, ay,” answered Captain Prodder 
thoughtfully. “ Mr. Mellish walks lame, 
don’t he?” he asked, after a pause. 

“Lame!” cried the driver; “Lord 
bless your heart, not a bit of it. John 
Mellish is as fine a young man as you’ll 
meet in this Riding. Ay, and finer too. 

I ought to know. I’ve seen him walk ' 
into our house often enough, in the race 
week.” 

The captain’s heart sank strangely at 
this information. The man with whom 
he had heard his niece quarrelling was 
not her husband then. The squabble 
had seemed natural enough to the un- 
initiated sailor while he looked at it in 
a matrimonial light ; but seen from an- 
other aspect it struck sudden terror to 
his sturdy heart, and blanched the ruddy 
hues in his brown face. “ Who was he, 
then ?” he thought; “ who was it as my 
niece was talkin’ to — after dark — alone, 

— a mile off her own home, eh ?” 

Before he could seek for a solution to 
the unuttered question which agitated 
and alarmed him, the report of a pistol 
rang sharply through the wood, and 
found an echo under a distant hill. 

The horse pricked up his ears, and 
jibbed a few paces ; the driver gave a 
low whistle. 

“ I thought so,” he said. “ Poachers ! 
This side of the wood’s chock full of 
game ; and though Squire Mellish is 
alius threatenin’ to prosecute ’etn, folks 
know pretty well as he’ll never do it.” 

The broad-shouldered, strong-limbed 
sailor leaned against the turnstile, trem- 
bling in every limb. 

What was that which his niece had 
said a quarter of an hour before, when 
the man had asked her whether she 
would like to shoot him ? 

“ Leave your horse,” he said, in a 
gasping voice; “tie him to the stile, 
and come with me. If — if — it’s poach- 
ers, we’ll — we’ll catch ’em.” 

The young man looped the reins across 
the turnstile. He had no very great 
terror of any inclination for flight latent 
in the gray horse from the “ Reindeer.” 
The two men ran into the wood ; the 
captain running in the direction in which 
his sharp ears had told him the shot had 
been fired. 

The moon was slowly rising in the 
tranquil heavens, but there was very 
little light yet in the wood. 


AURORA FLOYD. 


174 

The captain stopped near a rustic 
summer-house falling into decay, and 
half buried amidst the tangled foliage 
that clustered about the mouldering 
thatch and the dilapidated woodwork. 

“ It was hereabout the shot was fired,” 
muttered the captain ; “ about a hun- 
dred yards due nor’ard of the stile. I 
could take my oath as it weren’t far 
from this spot I’m standin’ on.” 

He looked about him in the dim light. 
He could see no one; but an army might 
have hidden amongst the trees that en- 
circled the open patch of turf on which 
the summer-house had been built. He 
listened ; with his hat off, and his big 
hand pressed tightly on his heart, as if 
to still its tumultuous beating. He list- 
ened as eagerly as he had often listened, 
far out on a glassy sea, for the first faint 
breath of a rising wind ; but he could 
hear nothing except the occasional croak- 
ing of the frogs in the pond near the 
summer-house. 

“I could have sworn it was about 
here the shot was fired,” he repeated. 
“ God grant as it was poachers, after 
all ; but it’s given me a turn that’s made 
me feel like some cockney lubber aboard 
a steamer betwixt Bristol and Cork. 
Lord, what a blessed old fool I am !” 
muttered the captain, after walking 
slowly round the summer-house to con- 
vince himself that there was no one hid- 
den in it. “One ’ud think I’d never 
heerd the sound of a ha’p’orth of pow- 
der before to-night.” 

He put on his hat, and walked a few 
paces forward, still looking about cau- 
tiously, and still listening ; but much 
easier in his mind than when first he had 
reentered the wood. 

lie stopped suddenly, arrested by a 
sound which has of itself, without any 
reference to its power of association, a 
mysterious and chilling intluence upon 
the human heart. This sound was the 
howling of a dog — the prolonged, mo- 
notonous howling of a dog. A cold 
sweat broke out upon the sailor’s fore- 
head. That sound, always one of terror 
to his superstitious nature, was doubly 
terrible to-night. 

“It means death,” he muttered, with 
a groan. “ No dog ever howled like 
that except for death.” 

He turned back, and looked about 
him. The moonlight glimmered faintly 


upon the broad patch of stagnant water 
near the summer-house, and upon its 
brink the captain saw two figures, black 
against the summer atmosphere : a pros- 
trate figure, lying close to the edge of 
the water; and a large dog, with his 
head uplifted to the sky, howling pit- 
eously. 

It was the bounden duty of poor John 
Mellish, in his capacity of host, to sit at 
the head of his table, pass the claret-jug, 
and listen to Colonel Maddison’s stories 
of the pig-sticking and the tiger-hunting, 
as long as the Indian officer chose to 
talk for the amusement of his 'friend and 
his son-in-law. It was perhaps lucky 
that patient Mr. Lofthouse was well up 
in all the stories, and knew exactly which 
departments of each narrative were to 
be laughed at, and which were to be lis- 
tened to with silent and awe-stricken 
attention ; for John Mellish made a very 
bad audience upon this occasion. He 
pushed the filberts towards the colonel 
at the very moment when “ the tigress 
was crouching for a spring, upon the 
rising ground exactly above us, sir, and 
when, by Jove,' Charley Maddison felt 
himself at pretty close quarters with the 
enemy, sir, and never thought to stretch 
his legs under this mahogany, or any 
other man’s, sir ;” and he spoiled the 
officer’s best joke by asking him for the 
claret in the middle of it. 

The tigers and the pigs were confusion 
and weariness of spirit’ to Mr. Mellish. 
He was yearning for the moment when, 
with any show of decency, he might make 
for the drawing-room, and find out what 
Aurora was doing in the still summer 
twilight. When the door was opened 
and fresh wine brought in, he heard the 
rattling of the keys under Mrs. Loft- 
house’s manipulation, and rejoiced to 
think that his wife was seated quietly, 
perhaps, listening to those sonatas in C 
flat, which the rector’s wife delighted to 
interpret. 

The lamps were brought in before 
Colonel Maddison’s stories were finished ; 
and when John’s butler came to ask if 
the gentlemen would like coffee, the 
worthy Indian officer said, “Yes, by 
ail means, and a cheroot with it. No 
smoking in the drawing-room, eh, Mel- 
lish ? Petticoat government and win- 
dow-curtains, I dare say. Clara doesn’t 


A U E 0 R A 


like my smoke at the rectory, and poor 
Lofthouse writes his sermons in the 
summer-house ; for lie can’t write with- 
out a weed, you know, and a volume of 
Tillotson, or some of those fellows, to 
prig from, eh, George ?” said the face- 
tious gentleman, digging his son-in-law 
in the ribs with his fat old fingers, and 
knocking over two or three wine-glasses 
in his ponderous jocosity. How dreary 
it all seemed to John Hellish to-night I 
He wondered how people felt who had 
no social mystery brooding upon their 
hearth ; no domestic skeleton cowering 
in their homely cupboard. He looked 
at the rector’s placid face with a pang 
of envy. ^ There was no secret kept from 
Mm. There was no perpetual struggle 
rending Ms heart; no dreadful doubts 
and fears that would not be quite lulled 
to rest; no vague terror incessant and un- 
reasoning; no mute argument for ever 
going forward, with plaintiff’s coun- 
sel and defendant’s counsel continually 
pleading the same cause, and arriving at 
the same result. Heaven take pity upon 
those who have to suffer such silent 
misery, such secret despair! We look at 
our neighbors’ smiling faces, and say, 
in bitterness of spirit, that A is a lucky 
fellow, and that B can’t be as much in 
debt as his friends say he is ; that C and 
his pretty wife are the happiest couple 
we know ; and to-morrow B is in the 
Gazette, and C is weeping over a dis- 
honored home, and a group of mother- 
less children, who wonder what mamma 
has done that papa should be so sorry. 
The battles are very quiet, but they are 
for ever being fought. We keep the fox 
hidden under our clo^ik, but the teeth of 
the animal are none the less sharp, nor 
the pain less terrible to bear; a little 
more terrible, perhaps, for being endured 
silently. John Hellish gave a long sigh 
of relief when the Indian officer finished 
his third cheroot, and pronounced him- 
self ready to join the ladies. The lamps 
in the drawing-room were lighted, and 
the curtains drawn before the open win- 
dows, when the three gentlemen entered. 
Hrs. Lofthouse was asleep upon one of 
the sofas, with a Book of Beauty lying 
open at her feet, and Hrs. Powell, pale 
and sleepless, — sleepless as trouble and 
* sorrow, as jealousy and hate, as any thing 
that is ravenous and unappeasable, — 
sat at her embroidery, working labo- 


FLOYD. 175 

rious monstrosities upon delicate cam- 
bric muslin. 

The colonel dropped heavily into a 
luxurious easy-chair, and quietly aban- 
doned himself to repose. Hr. Lofthouse 
awoke his wife, and consulted her about 
the propriety of ordering the carriage. 
John Hellish looked eagerly round the 
room. To him it was empty. The rec- 
tor and his wife, the Indian officer and 
the ensign’s widow, were only so many 
“phosphorescent spectralities,” “phan- 
tasm captains;” in short, they were not 
Aurora. 

“Where’s Lolly?” he asked, looking 
from Hrs. Lofthouse to Hrs. Powell ; 
“ where’s my wife ?” 

“ I really do not know,” answered 
Hrs. Powell, with icy deliberation. “I 
have not been watching Hrs. Hellish.” 

The poisoned darts glanced away from 
John’s preoccupied breast. There was 
no room in his wounded heart for such 
a petty sting as this. 

“ Where’s my wife ?” he cried pas- 
sionately ; “ you must know where she 
is. She’s not here. Is she up-stairs ? 
Is she out of doors ?” 

“To the best of my belief,” replied 
the ensign’s widow, with more than usual 
precision, “Hrs. Hellish is in some part 
of the grounds; she has been out of doors 
ever since we left the dining-room.” 

The French clock upon the mantel- 
piece chimed the three-quarters after ten 
as she finished speaking : as if to give 
emphasis to her words, and to remind 
Hr. Hellish how long his wife had been 
absent. He bit his lip fiercely, and 
strode towards one of the windows. He 
was going to look for his wife ; but he 
stopped, as he flung aside the window- 
curtain, arrested by Hrs. Powell’s up- 
lifted hand. 

“Hark!” she said, “there is some- 
thing the matter, I fear. Hid you hear 
that violent ringing at the hall-door ?” 

Hr. Hellish let fall the curtain, and 
reentered the room. 

“It’s Aurora, no doubt,” he said; 
“ they’ve shut her out again, I suppose. 
I beg, Hrs. Powell, that you will pre- 
vent this in future. Really, ma’am, it 
is hard that my wife should be shut out 
of her own house.” 

He might have said much more, but 
he stopped, pale and breathless, at the 
sound of a hubbub in the hall, and 


176 


AURORA FLOTD. 


rushed to the room-door. He opened 
it and looked out; with Mrs. Powell and 
Mr. and Mrs. Lofthouse crowding be- 
hind him, and looking oyer his shoulder. 

Half-a-dozen servants were clustered 
round a roughly dressed, seafaring-look- 
ing man, who, wdth his hat off and his 
disordered hair falling about his white 
face, was telling in broken sentences, 
scarcely intelligible for the speaker’s agi- 
tation, that a murder had been done in 
the wood. 


CHAPTER XXV. ^ 

THE DEED THAT HAD BEEN DONE IN THE 
WOOD. 

The bare-headed, seafaring man w’ho 
stood in the centre of the hall was Cap- 
tain Samuel Prodder. The scared faces 
of the servants gathered round him told 
more plainly than his own words, which 
came hoarsely from his parched white 
lips, the nature of the tidings that he 
brought. 

John Mellish strode across the hall, 
with an awful calmness on his white 
face, and parting the hustled group of 
servants with his strong arms, as a 
mighty wind rends asunder the storm- 
beaten waters, he placed himself face to 
face with Captain Prodder. 

“ Who are you ?” he asked sternly ; 
*‘and what has brought you here?” 

The Indian officer had been aroused 
by the clamor, and had emerged, red 
and bristling with self-importance, to 
take his part in the business in hand. 

There are some pies in the making of 
which every body yearns to have a finger. 
It is a great privilege, after some social 
convulsion has taken place, to be able to 
say, “ I was there at the time the scene 
occurred, sir or, “ I was standing as 
close to him when the blow was struck, 
ma’am, as I am to you at this moment.” 
People are apt to take pride out of 
strange things. An elderly gentleman 
at Doncaster, showing me his comforta- 
bly-furnished apartments, informed me, 
with evident satisfaction, that Mr. Wil- 
liam Palmer had lodged in those very 
rooms. 


Colonel Maddison pushed aside his 
daughter and her husband, and struggled 
out into the hall. 

“Come, my man,” he said, echoing 
John’s interrogatory, “let us hear what 
has brought you here at such a remarka- 
bly unseasonable hour.” 

The sailor gave no direct answer to 
the question. He pointed with his 
thumb across his shoulder towards that 
dismal spot in the lonely wood, which 
was as present to his mental vision now 
as it had been to his bodily eyes a quar- 
ter of an hour before. 

“A man I” he gasped; “a man- 
lyin’ close agen’ the water’s edge, — shot 
through the heart.” 

“ Dead ?” asked some one, in an awful 
tone. The voices and the questions 
came from whom they would in the awe- 
stricken terror of those first moments 
of overwhelming horror and surprise. 
No one knew who spoke except the 
speakers ; perhaps- even they were 
scarcely aware that they had spoken. 

“ Dead ?” asked one of those eager 
listeners. 

“ Stone dead.” 

“ A man — shot dead in the wood I” 
cried John Mellish ; “what man ?” 

“ I beg your pardon, sir,” said the 
grave old butler, laying his hand gently 
upon his master’s shoulder, “ I think, 
from what this person says, that the 
man who has been shot is — the new 
trainer, Mr. — Mr. — ” 

“ Conyers I” exclaimed John. “ Con- 
yers I who — who should shoot him ?^’ 
The question was asked in a hoarse 
whisper. It was impossible for the 
speaker’s face to 'grow whiter than it 
had been from the moment in which be 
had opened the drawing-room door, and 
looked out into the hall ; but some 
terrible change not to be translated into 
words came over it at the mention of the 
trainer’s name. 

He stood motionless and silent, push- 
ing his hair from his forehead, and 
staring wildly about him. 

The grave butler laid his warning 
hand for a second time upon his master’s 
shoulder. 

“ Sir, Mr. Mellish,” he said, eager to 
arouse the young man from the dull, 
stupid quiet into which he had fallen, — 
“ excuse me, sir, but if my mistress 


AURORA FLOYD. 


should come in suddenly, and hear of 
this, she might be upset perhaps. 
Wouldn’t it be better to — ” 

“Yes, yes I” cried John Mellish, lift- 
ing his head suddenly, as if aroused into 
immediate action by the mere suggestion 
of liis wife’s name, — “yes! Clear out 
of the hall, every one of yon,” he said, 
addressing the eager group of pale-faced 
servants. “And you, sir,” he added to 
Captain Prodder, “come with me.” 

He walked towards the dining-room 
door. The sailor followed him, still 
bare-headed, still with a semi-bewildered 
expression in his dusky face. 

“ It ain’t the first time I’ve seen a man 
shot,” he thought; “but it’s the first 
time I’ve felt like this.” 

Before Mr. Mellish could reach the 
dining-room, before the servants could 
disperse and return to their proper 
quarters, one of the half-glass doors, 
which had been left ajar, was pushed 
open by the light touch of a woman’s 
hand, and Aurora Mellish entered the 
hall. 

“ Ah ! ha I” thought the ensign’s 
widow, who looked on at the scene 
snugly sheltered by Mr. and Mrs. Loft- 
house, “ my lady is caught a second time 
in her evening rambles. What will he 
say to her goings-on to-night, I won- 
der ?” • 

Aurora’s manner presented a singular 
contrast to the terror and agitation of 
the assembly in the hall. A vivid crimson 
flush glowed in her cheeks and lit up her 
shilling eyes. She carried her head high, 
in that queenly defiance which was her 
peculiar grace. She walked with a light 
step ; she moved with easy, careless 
gestures. It seemed as if some burden 
which she had long carried had been 
suddenly removed from her. But at 
sight of the crowd in the hall she drew 
back with a look of alarm. 

“ What has happened, John ?” she 
cried ; “ what is wrong ?” 

He lifted his hand with a warning 
gesture, — a gesture that plainly said : 
WJiatever trouble or sorrow there may 
be, let her be spared the knowledge of 
it ; let her be sheltered from the pain. 

“ Yes, ray darling,” he answered 
quietly, taking her hand and leading 
her into the drawing-room, “there is 
something wrong. An accident has 
happened — in the wood yonder ; but it 
11 


m 

concerns no one whom you care for. 
Go, dear; I will tell you all by and by. 
Mrs. Lofthouse, you will take care of 
my wife. Lofthouse, come with me. 
Allow me to shut the door, Mrs. Powell, 
if you please,” he added to the ensign’s 
widow, who did not seem inclined to 
leave her post upon the threshold of 
the drawing-room. “Any curiosity which 
you may have about the business shall 
be satisfied in due time. For the pre- 
sent, you will oblige me by remaining 
with my wife and Mrs. Lofthouse.” 

He paused, with his hand upon the 
drawing-room door, and looked at 
Aurora. 

She was standing with her shawl 
upon her arm, watching her husband ; 
and she advanced eagerly to him as she 
met his glance. 

“John,” she exclaimed, “for mercy’s 
sake, tell me the trnth ! What is this 
accident ?” 

He was silent. for a moment, gazing 
at her eager face,. — that face whose ex- 
quisite mobility expressed every thought; 
then, looking at her with a strange so- 
lemnity, he said gravely, “You were in 
the wood just now, Aurora ?” 

“ I was,” she answered ; “ I have only 
just left the grounds. A man passed 
me, running violently, about a quarter 
of an hour ago. I thought he was a 
poacher. Was it to him the accident 
happened ?” 

“ No. There was a shot fifed in the 
wood some time since. Did you hear 
it ?” 

“ I did,” replied Mrs. Mellish, look- 
ing at him with sudden terror and sur- 
prise. “ I knew there were often poach- 
ers about near the road, and I was not 
alarmed by it. Was there any thing 
wrong in that shot ? Was any one 
hurt ?” 

Her eyes were fixed upon his face, 
dilated with that look of wondering ter- 
ror. 

“ Yes ; a — a man was hurt.” 

Aurora looked at Jiira in silence, — 
looked at him with a stony face, whose 
only expression was an utter bewilder- 
ment. Every other feeling seemed blot- 
ted away in that one sense of wonder. 

John Mellish led her to a chair near 
Mrs. Lofthouse, who had been seated, 
with Mrs. Powell, at the other end of 
the room, close to the piano, and too far 


178 


AURORA FLOYD. 


from the door to overliear the conversa- 
tion which had just taken place between 
John and lys wife. People do not talk 
very loudly in moments of intense agita- 
tion. They are liable to be deprived of 
some portion of their vocal power in 
the fearful crisis of terror or despair. A 
numbness seizes the organs of speech ; a 
partial paralysis disables the ready 
tongue ; the trembling lips refuse to do 
their duty. The soft pedal of the 
human instrument is down, and the tones 
are feeble and muffled, wandering into 
weak minor shrillness, or sinking to 
husky basses, beyond the ordinary com- 
pass of the speaker’s voice. The sten- 
torian accents in which Claude Mel- 
notte bids adieu to Mademoiselle Des- 
chappelle mingle very elfectively with 
the brazen clamor of the Marseillaise 
Hymn ; the sonorous tones in which 
Mistress Julia appeals to her Hunch- 
back guardian are pretty sure to bring 
down the approving thunder of the 
eighteen penny gallery ; but I doubt if 
the noisy energy of stage-grief is true to 
nature, however wise in art. I’m afraid 
that an actor who would play Claude 
Melnotte with a pre-Raj)haelite fidelity 
to nature would be an insufferable bore, 
and utterly inaudible beyond the third 
row in the pit. The artist must draw 
his own line between nature and art, 
and map out the extent of his own terri- 
tory. If he finds that cream-colored 
marble is more artistically beautiful than 
a rigid presentment of actual flesh and 
blood, let him stain his marble of that 
delicate hue until the end of time. If he 
can represent five acts of agony and 
despair without once turning his back 
to his audience or sitting down, let him 
do it. If he is conscientiously true to his 
art, let him choose for himself how true 
he shall be to nature. 

John Mellisli took his wife’s hand in 
his own, and grasped it with a convul- 
sive pressure that almost crushed the 
delicate fingers. 

“ Stay here, ray dear, till I come 
back to you,” he said. “ Now, Loft- 
house.” 

Mr. Lofthouse followed his friend into 
the hall, where Colonel Maddison had 
been making the best use of his time by 
questioning the merchant-captain. 

“ Come, gentlemen,” said John, lead- 
ing the way to the dining-room ; “ come, 


colonel, and you, too, Lofthouse ; and 
you, sir,” he added to the sailor, “step 
this way.” 

The debris of the dessert still covered 
the table, but the men did not advance 
far into the room. John stood aside as 
the others went in, and entering the 
last, closed the door behind him, and 
stood with his back against it. 

“ Now,” he said, turning sharply upon 
Samuel Prodder, “ what is this busi- 
ness ?” 

“ I’m afraid it’s soocide — or — or mur- 
der,” answered the sailor gravely. “ I’ve 
told this good gentleman all about it.” 

This good gentleman was Colonel 
Maddison, who seemed delighted to 
plunge into the conversation. 

“ Yes, my dear Mellish,” he said 
eagerly ; “ our friend, who describes 

himself as a sailor, and who had come 
down to see Mrs. Mellish, whose mother 
he knew when he was a boy, has told 
me all about this shocking affair. Of 
course the body must be removed imme- 
diately, and the sooner your servants 
go out with lanterns for that purpose 
the better. Decision, my dear Mellish, 
decision and prompt action are indis- 
pensable in these sad catastrophes.” 

“ The body removed !” repeated John 
Mellish ; “ the man is dead, then.” 

“ Quite dead,” answered the sailor ; 
“ he was dead when I found him, though 
it wasn’t above seven minutes after the 
shot was fired. I left a man with him — 
a young man as drove me from Doncas- 
ter — and a dog, — some big dog that 
watched beside him, howling awful, and 
wouldn’t leave him.” 

“ Did you — see — the man’s face ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“You are a stranger here,” said John 
Mellish : “ it is useless, therefore, to ask 
you if you know who the man is.” 

“No, sir,” answered the sailor, “ I 
didn’t know him ^ but the young man 
from the Reindeer — ” 

“ He recognized him — ” 

“Y’es; he said he’d seen the man in 
Doncaster only the night before ; and 
that he was your — trainer, I think he 
called him — ” 

“Y^es, yes.” . 

“A lame chap.” 

“Come, gentlemen,” said John, turn- 
ing to his friends, “what are we to do ?” 

“ Send the servants into the wood,” 


AURORA FLOYD. 


replied Colonel Maddison, “and have 
the body carried — ” 

“Not here,” cried John Mellish, in- 
terrupting him, “ not here ; it would kill 
my wife.” 

“ Where did the man live asked the 
colonel. 

“ In the north lodge. A cottage 
against the northern gates, which are 
never used now.” 

“ Then let the body be taken there,” 
answered the Indian soldier; “let one 
of your people run for the parish-con- 
stable ; and you’d better send for the 
nearest surgeon immediately, though, 
from what our friend here says, a hun- 
dred of ’em couldn’t do any good. It’s 
an awful business. Some poaching fray, 
I suppose.” 

“Yes, yes,” answered John quickly; 
“no doubt.” 

“Was the man disliked in the neigh- 
borhood ?” asked Colonel Maddison ; 
“ had he made himself in any manner 
obnoxious ?” 

“ I should scarcely think it likely, 
lie had only been with me about a 
week.” 

The servants, who had dispersed at 
John’s command, had not gone very far. 
They had lingered in corridors and lob- 
bies, ready at a moment’s notice to rush 
out into the hall again, and act their 
minor parts in the tragedy. They pre- 
ferred doing any thing to returning qui- 
etly to their own quarters. 

They came out eagerly at Mr. Mel- 
lish’s summons. He gave his orders 
briefly, selecting two of the men, and 
sending the others about their business. 

“ Bring a couple of lanterns,” he said ; 
“ and follow us across the park towards 
the pond in the wood.” 

Colonel Maddison, Mr. -Lofthouse, 
Captain Prodder, and John Mellish, left 
the house together. The moon, still 
slowly rising in the broad, cloudless 
heavens, silvered the quiet lawn, and 
shimmered upon the tree-tops in the dis- 
tance. The three gentlemen walked at 
a rapid pace, led by Samuel Prodder, 
who kept a little way in advance, and 
followed by a couple of grooms, who 
carried darkened stable-lanterns. 

As they entered the wood, they stopped 
involuntarily, arrested by that solemn 
sound which had first drawn the sailor’s 
attention to the dreadful deed that had 


179 

been done — the howling of the dog. It 
sounded in the distance like a low, feeble 
wail : a long monotonous death-cry. 

They followed that dismal indication 
of the spot to which they were to go. 
They made their way through the sha- 
dowy avenue, and emerged upon the 
silvery patch of turf and fern, where the 
rotting summer-house stood in its soli- 
tary decay. The two figures — the pros- 
trate figure on the brink of the water, 
and the figure of the dog with uplifted 
head — still remained exactly as the sailor 
had left them three-quarters of an hour 
before. The young man from the Rein- 
deer stood aloof from these two figures, 
and advanced to meet the newcomers as 
they drew near. 

Colonel Maddison took a lantern from 
one of the men, and rarr forward to the 
water’s edge. The dog rose as he ap- 
proached, and walked slowly round the 
prostrate form, sniffing at it, and whining 
piteously. John Mellish called the ani- 
mal away. 

“ This man was in a sitting posture 
when he was shot,” said Colonel Maddi- 
son decisively. “ He was sitting upon 
this bench here.” 

He pointed to a dilapidated rustic 
seat close to the margin of the stagnant 
water. 

“ He was sitting upon this bench,” 
repeated the colonel ; “ for he’s fallen 
close against it, as you see. Unless I’m 
very much mistaken, he was shot from 
behind.” 

“You don’t think he shot himself, 
then ?” asked John Mellish. 

“Shot himself!” cried the colonel; 
“ not a bit of it. But we’ll soon settle 
that. If he shot himself, the pistol must 
be close against him. Here, bring a 
loose plank from that summer-house, and 
lay the body upon it,” added the Indian 
officer, speaking to the servants. 

Captain Prodder and the two grooms 
selected the broadest plank they could 
find. It was moss-grown and rotten, 
and straggling wreaths of wild clematis 
were entwined about it ; but it served 
the purpose for which it was wanted. 
They laid it upon the grass, and lifted 
the body of James Conyers on to it, 
with his handsome face— ghastly and 
horrible in the fixed agony of sudden 
death — turned upward to the moonlit 
sky. It was wonderful how mechani- 


180 


AURORA FLOYD. 


cally and quietly they went to work, 
promptly and silently obeying the colo- 
iiePs orders. 

John Mellish and Mr. Lofthouse 
searched the slippery grass upon the 
bank, and groped amongst the fringe of 
fern, without result. There was no wea- 
pon to be found any where within a con- 
siderable radius of the body. 

While they were searching in every 
direction for this missing link in the 
mystery of the man’s death, the parish- 
constable arrived with the servant who 
had been sent to summon him. 

He had very little to say for himself, 
except that he supposed it was poachers 
as had done it ; and that he also sup- 
posed all partiklars would come out at 
tlie inquest. He was a simple rural 
functionary, accustomed to petty deal- 
ings with refractory tramps, contuma- 
cious poachers, and hnpounded cattle, 
and was scarcely master of the situation 
in any great emergency. 

Mr. Prodder and the servants lifted 
the plank upon which the body lay, and 
struck into the long avenue leading 
northward, walking a little ahead of the 
three gentlemen and the constable. The 
young man from the Reindeer returned 
to look after his horse, and to drive 
round to the north lodge, where he was 
to meet Mr. Prodder. All had been 
done so quietly that the knowledge of 
the catastrophe had not passed beyond 
the domains of Mellish Park. In the 
holy summer-evening stillness James 
Conyers was carried back to the cham- 
ber from whose narrow window he had 
looked out upon the beautiful world, 
weary of its beauty, only a few hours 
before. 

The purposeless life was suddenly 
closed. The careless wanderer’s jour- 
ney had come to an unthought-of-end. 
What a melancholy record, what a mean- 
ingless and unfinished page I Nature, 
blindly bountiful to the children whom 
she has yet to know, had bestowed her 
richest gifts upon this man. She had 
created a splendid image, and had 
chosen a soul at random, ignorantly 
enshrining it in her most perfectly- 
fashioned clay. Of all who read the 
story of this man’s death in the follow- 
ing Sunday’s newspapers, there was not 
one who shed a tear for him ; there was 
not one who could sa^^, “ That man once 


stepped out of his way to do me a kind- 
ness; and may the Lord have mercy 
upon his soul 1” 

Shall I be sentimental, then, because 
he is dead, and regret that he was not 
spared a little longer, and allowed a day 
of grace in which he might repent? 
Had he lived for ever, I do not think 
he would have lived long enough to be- 
come that which it was not in his nature 
to be. May God, in His infinite com- 
passion, have pity upon the souls which 
He has Himself created ; and where He 
has withheld the light, may He excuse 
the darkness 1 The phrenologists who 
examined the head of William Palmer 
declared that he was so utterly deficient 
in moral perception, so entirely devoid 
of conscientious restraint, that he could 
not help being what he was. Heaven 
keep us from too much credence in that 
horrible fatalism! Is a man’s destiny 
here and hereafter to depend upon bulb- 
ous projections scarcely perceptible to 
uneducated fingers, and good and evil 
propensities which can be measured by 
the compass or weighed in the scale ? 

The dismal cortege slowly made its 
way under the silver moonlight, the 
trembling leaves making a murmuring 
music in the faint suinmer-air, the pale 
glow-worms shining here and there amid 
the tangled verdure. The bearers of the 
dead walked with a slow but steady 
tramp in advance of the rest. All 
walked in silence. What should they 
say ? In the presence of death’s awful 
mystery life made a pause. There was 
a brief interval in the hard business of 
existence ; a hushed and solemn break 
in the working of life’s machinery. 

“ There’ll be an inquest,” thought 
Mr. Prodder, “ and I shall have to give 
evidence. I wonder what questions 
they’ll ask me ?” 

He did not think this once, but per- 
petually; dyvelling with a half-stupid 
persistence upon the thought of that 
inquivsition which must most infallibly be 
made, and those questions that might be 
asked. The honest sailor’s simple mind 
was cast astray in the utter bewilder- 
ment of tl^is night’s mysterious horror. 
The story of life was changed. He had 
come to play his humble part in some 
sweet domestic drama of love and confi- 
dence, and he found himself involved in 
a tragedy : a horrible mystery of hatred, 


AURORA FLOYD. 


181 


secrecy,, and murder ; a dreadful maze, 
from whose obscurity he saw uo hope 
of issue. 

A beacon-light glimmered in the lower 
window of the cottage by the north 
gates — a feeble ray, that glittered like a 
gem from out a bower of honeysuckle 
and clematis. The little garden-gate was 
closed, but it only fastened with a latch. 

The bearers of the body paused before 
entering the garden, and the cons*table 
stepped aside to speak to Mr. Mellish. 

“ Is there any body lives in the cot- 
tage he asked. 

“Yes,” answered John; “the trainer 
employed an old hanger-on of my own — 
a half-witted fellow called Hargraves.” 

“ It’s him as burns the light in there 
most likely, then,” said the constable. 
“ I’ll go in and speak to him first. Do 
you wait here till I come out again,” he 
added, turning to the men who carried 
the body. 

The lodge-door was on the latch. 
The constable opened it softly, and 
went in. A rushlight was burning upon 
the table, the candlestick placed in a 
basin of water. A bottle half-filled with 
brandy, and a tumbler, stood near the 
light; but the room was empty. The 
constable took his shoes off, and crept 
up the little staircase. The upper floor 
of the lodge consisted of two rooms — 
one, sufficiently large and comfortable, 
looking towards the stable-gates ; the 
other, smaller and darker, looked out 
upon a patch of kitchen-garden and on 
the fence which separated Mr. Mellish’s 
estate from the high-road. The larger 
chamber was empty; but the door of the 
smaller was ajar ; and the constable, 
pausing to listen at that half-open door, 
heard the regular breathing of a heavy 
sleeper. 

He knocked sharply upon the panel. 

“ Who’s there ?” asked the person 
within, starting up from a truckle bed- 
stead. “ Is’t thou. Muster Conyers ?” 

“ No,” answered the constable. “ It’s 
me, William Dork, of Little Mesling- 
ham. Come down-stairs; I want to 
speak to you.” 

“ Is there aught wrong ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Poachers ?” 

“That’s as may be,” answered Mr. 
Dork. “ Come down-stairs, will you ?” 

Mr. Hargraves muttered something 


to the effect that he would make his 
appearance as soon as he could find 
sundry portions of his rather fragmentary 
toilet. The constable looked into the 
room, and watched the Softy groping 
for his garments in the moonlight. Three 
minutes afterwards Stephen Hargraves 
slowly shambled down the angular 
wooden stairs, which wound, in a cork- 
screw fashion affected by the builders of 
small dwellings, from the mpper to the 
lower floor. 

“ Now,” said Mr. Dork, planting the 
Softy opposite to him, with the feeble 
rays of the rushlight upon his sickly 
face^ — “now then, I want you to answer 
me a question. At what time did your 
master leave the house ?” 

“At half-past seven o’clock,” an- 
swered the Softy, in his whispering 
voice ; “ she was stroikin’ the half-hour 
as he went out.” 

He pointed to a small Dutch clock in 
a corner of the room. His countrymen 
always speak of a clock as “ she.” 

“ Oh, he went out at half-past seven 
o’clock, did he?” said the constable; “and 
you haven’t seen him since, I suppose ?” 

“ No. He told me he should be late, 
and I wasn’t to sit oop for him. He swore 
at me last night for sitting oop for him. 
But is there aught wrong?” asked the 
Softy. 

Mr. Dork did not condescend to reply 
to this question. He walked straight to 
the door, opened it, and beckoned to 
those who stood without in the summer 
moonlight, patiently waiting for his 
summons. “ You may bring him in,” 
he said. 

They carried their ghastly burden into 
the pleasant rustic chamber : — the cham- 
ber in which Mr. James Conyers had sat 
smoking and drinking a few hours be- 
fore. Mr. Morton, the surgeon from 
Meslingham, the village nearest to the 
park-gates, arrived as the body was be- 
ing carried in, and ordered a temporary 
couch of mattresses to be spread upon 
a couple of tables placed together, in 
the lower room, for the reception of the 
trainer’s corpse. 

John Mellish, Samuel Prodder, and 
Mr. Lofthouse, remained outside the 
cottage. Colonel Maddison, the servants, 
the constable, and the doctor, were all 
clustered round the corpse. 

“ He has been dead about an hoar 


AURORA FLOYD. 


182 

and a quarter,” said tlie doctor, after a 
brief inspection of the body. “ He has 
been shot in the back ; the bullet has 
not penetrated the heart, for in that case 
there would have been no haBmorrhage. 
He has respired after receiving the shot; 
but death must have been almost instan- 
taneous.” 

Before making his examination, the 
surgeon had assisted Mr. Dork, the con- 
stable, to draw off the coat and waist- 
coat of the deceased. The bosom of 
the waistcoat was saturated with the 
blood that had flowed from the parted 
lips of the dead man. 

It was Mr. Dork’s business to exam- 
ine these garments, in the hope of find- 
ing some shred of evidence which might 
become a clue to the secret of the 
trainer’s death. He turned out the 
])Ockets of the shooting-coat, and of the 
waistcoat ; one of these pockets con- 
tained a handful of halfpence, a couple 
of shillings, a fourpenny-piece, and a 
rusty watch-key ; another held a little 
])arcel of tobacco wrapped in an old 
betting-list, and a broken meerschaum 
pipe, black and greasy with the essential 
oil of bygone shag and bird’s-eye. In 
one of the waistcoat pockets Mr. Dork 
found the dead man’s silver watch, with 
a blood-stained ribbon and a worthless 
gilt seal. Amongst all these things 
there was nothing calculated to throw 
any light upon the mystery. Colonel 
Maddison shrugged his shoulders as the 
constable emptied the paltry contents of 
the trainer’s pockets on to a little dresser 
at one end of the room. 

“ There’s nothing here that makes the 
business any clearer,” he said; “but to my 
mind it’s plain enough. The man was 
new here, and he brought new ways with 
him from his last situation. The poachers 
and vagabonds have been used to have 
it all their own way about Mellish Park, 
and they didn’t like this poor fellow’s 
interference. He wanted to play the 
tyrant, I dare say, and made himself 
obnoxious to some of the worst of the 
lot; and he’s caught it hot, poor chap, 
that’s all I’ve got to say.” 

Colonel Maddison, with the recollec- 
tion of a refractory Punjaub strong 
upon him, had no very great reverence 
for the mysterious spark that lights the 
^ human temple. If a man made himself 
obnoxious to other men, other men were 


very likely to kill him. This w'as the 
soldier’s simple theory ; and, having 
delivered himself of his opinion respect- 
ing the trainer’s death, he emerged from 
the cottage, and was ready to go home 
with John Mellish, and drink another 
bottle of that celebrated tawny port 
which had been laid in by his host’s 
father twenty years before. 

The constable stood close against a 
candle, that had been hastily lighted and 
thrust unceremoniously into a disused 
blacking-bottle, with the waistcoat still 
in his hands. He was turning the blood- 
stained garment inside out ; for while 
emptying the pockets he had felt a thick 
substance that seemed like a folded 
paper, but the whereabouts of which he 
had not been able to discover. He 
uttered a suppressed exclamation of 
surprise presently ; for he found the 
solution of this difficulty. The paper 
was sewn between the inner lining and 
the outer material of the waistcoat. He 
discovered this by examining the seam, 
a part of which was sewn with coarse 
stitches and a thread of a different color 
to the rest. He ripped open this part 
of the seam, and drew out the paper, 
which was so much blood-stained as to 
be undecipherable to Mr. Dork’s rather 
obtuse vision. “ I’ll say naught about 
it, and keep it to show to th’ coroner,” 
he thought ; “ I’ll lay he’ll make some- 
thing out of it.” The constable folded 
the document and secured it in a leathern 
pocket-book, a bulky receptacle, the 
very aspect of which was wont to strike 
terror to rustic defaulters. “ I’ll show 
it to the coroner,” he thought ; “and if 
aught particklar comes out, I may get 
something for my trouble.” 

The village-surgeon having done his 
duty, prepared to leave the crowded 
little room, where the gaping servants 
still lingered, as if loth to tear themselves 
away from the ghastly figure of the dead 
man, over which Mr. Morton had spread 
a patchwork coverlet, taken from the 
bed in the chamber above. The Softy 
had looked on quietly enough at the 
dismal scene, watching the faces of the 
small assembly, and glancing furtively 
from one td another beneath the shadow 
of his bushy red eyebrows. His haggard 
face, always of a sickly white, seemed 
to-night no more colorless than usual. 
His slow whispering tones were not 


AURORA FLOYD. 


183 


more suppressed than they always were. 
If he had a hang-dog manner and a 
furtive glance, the manner and the glance 
were both common to him. No one 
looked at him; no one heeded him. 
After the first question as to the hour at 
which the trainer left the lodge had been 
asked and answered, nO one spoke to 
him. If he got in any body’s way, he 
was pushed aside ; if he said any thing, 
nobody listened to him. The dead man 
was the sole monarch of that dismal 
scene. It was to him they looked with 
awe-stricken glances ; it was of him 
they spoke in subdued whispers. All 
their questions, their suggestions, their 
conjectures, were about him, and him 
alone. There is this to be observed in 
the physiology of every murder, — that 
before the coroner’s inquest the sole 
object of public curiosity is the murdered 
man ; while immediately after that judi- 
cial investigation the tide of feeling 
, turns; the dead man is buried and for- 
gotten, and the suspected murderer be- 
comes the hero of men’s morbid imagina- 
tions. 

John Mellish looked in at the door 
of the cottage to ask a few questions. 

“ Have you found any thing. Dork ?” 
he asked. 

“ Nothing particklar, sir.” 

“ Nothing that throws any light upon 
this business ?” 

“No, sir.” 

“ You are going home, then, I sup- 
pose ?” 

“ Yes, sir, I must be going back now; 
if you’ll leave some one liere to watch — ” 

“Yes, yes,” said John ; “one of the 
servants shall stay.” 

“Very well, then, sir; I’ll just take 
the names of the witnesses that’ll be ex- 
amined at the inquest, and I’ll go over 
and see the coroner early to-morrow 
morning.” 

“ The witnesses ; ah, to be sure. Who 
will you want ?” 

Mr. Dork hesitated for a moment, 
rubbing the bristles upon his chin. 

“Well, there’s this man here, Har- 
graves, I think you called him,” he said 
j)resently, “ we shall want him ; for it 
seems he was the last that saw the de- 
ceased alive, leastways as I can hear on 
yet ; then we shall want the gentleman 
as found the body, and the young man 
as was with him when he heard the shot : 


the gentleman as found the body is the 
most particklar of all, and I’ll speak to 
him at once.” 

John Mellish turned round, fully ex- 
pecting to see Mr. Prodder at his elbow, 
where he had been some time before. 
John had a perfect recollection of seeing 
the loosely-clad seafaring figure stand- 
ing behind him in the moonlight ; but, 
in the terrible confusion of his mind, he 
could not remember exactly when it was 
that he had last seen the sailor. It 
might have been only five minutes be- 
fore ; it might have been a quarter of an 
hour. John’s ideas of time were anni- 
hilated by the horror of the catastrophe 
which had marked this night with the 
red brand of murder. It seemed to him 
as if he had been standing for hours in 
the little cottage-garden, with Reginald 
Lofthouse^ by his side, listening to the 
low hum of the voices in the crowded 
room, and waiting to see the end of the 
dreary business. 

Mr. Dork looked about him in the 
moonlight, entirely bewildered by the 
disappearance of Samuel Prodder. 

“Why, where on earth has he gone?” 
exclaimed the constable. “ We must 
have him before the coroner. What’ll 
Mr. Hayward say to me for letting him 
slip through my fingers ?” 

“ The man was here a quarter of an 
hour ago, so he can’t be very far off,” 
suggested Mr. Lofthouse. “Does any 
body know who he is ?” 

No ; nobody knew any thing about 
him. He had appeared as mysteriously 
as if he had risen from the earth, to 
bring terror and confusion upon it with 
the evil tidings which he bore. Stay; 
some one suddenly remembered that he 
had been accompanied by Bill Jarvis, 
the young man from the Reindeer, and 
that he had ordered the young man to 
drive his trap to the north gates, and 
wait for him there. 

The constable ran to the gates upon 
receiving this information ; but there 
was no vestige of the horse and gig, or 
of the young man, Samuel Prodder had 
evidently taken advantage of the con- 
fusion, and had driven off in the gig 
under cover of the general bewilder- 
ment. 

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, sir,” said 
William Dork, addressing Mr. Mellish. 
“If you’ll lend me a horse and trap. I’ll 


184 


AUKORA FLOYD. 


drive into Doncaster, and see if tins 
man’s to be found at the Reindeer. Wc 
must have him for a witness.” 

John Mellish assented to this arrange- 
ment. He left one of the grooms to 
keep watch in the death chamber, in 
company with Stephen Hargraves the 
Softy ; and, after bidding the surgeon 
good night, walked slowly homewards 
with his friends. The church-clock was 
striking twelve as the three gentlemen 
left the wood, and passed through the 
little iron gateway on the lawn. 

“We had better not tell the ladies 
more than we are obliged to tell them 
about this business,” said John Mellish, 
as they approached the house, where the 
lights were still burning in the hall and 
drawing-room ; “ we shall only agitate 
them by letting them know the worst.” 

“ To be sure, to be sure, my boy,” 
answered the coloijel. “ My poor little 
Maggie always cries if she hears of any 
thing of this kind ; and Lofthouse is al- 
most as big a baby,” added the soldier, 
glancing rather contemptuously at his 
son-in-law, who had not spoken once 
during that slow homeward walk. 

John Mellish thought very little of 
the strange disappearance of Captain 
Prodder. The man had objected to be 
summoned as a witness perhaps, and had 
gone. It was only natural. He did not 
even know his name ; he only knew him 
as the mouthpiece of evil tidings, which 
had shaken him to the very soul. That 
this man Conyers — this man of all others, 
this man towards whom he had conceived 
a deeply-rooted aversion, an unspoken 
horror — should have perished mysteri- 
ously by an unknown hand, was an event 
so strange and appalling as to deprive 
him for a time of all power of thought,, all 
capability of reasoning. Who had killed 
this man, — this penniless good-for-no- 
thing trainer ? Who could have had 
any motive for such a deed ? Who — ? 
The cold sweat broke out upon his brow 
in the anguish of the thought. 

Who had done this deed ? 

It was not the work of any poacher. 
No. It was very well for Colonel Mad- 
dison, in his ignorance of antecedent 
facts, to account for it in that manner ; 
but John Mellish knew that he was 
wrong. James Conyers had only been 
at the Park a week. He had had neither 
time nor opportunity for making himself 


obnoxious ; and, beyond that, he was 
not the man to. make himself obnoxious. 
He was a selfish, indolent rascal, who 
only loved his own ease, and who would 
have allowed the young partridges to be 
wired under his very nose. Who, then, 
had done this deed ? 

There was only one person who had 
any motive for wishing to be rid of this 
man. One person who, made desperate 
by some great despair, enmeshed per- 
haps by some net hellishly contrived by 
a villain, hopeless of any means of ex- 
trication, in a moment of madness, 
might have— No ! In the face of every 
evidence that earth could offer — against 
reason, against hearing, eyesight, judg- 
ment, and memory — he would say, as he 
said now. No / She was innocent I She 
was innocent I She had looked in her 
husband’s face, the clear light had shone 
from her luminous eyes, a stream of 
electric radiance penetrating straight to 
his heart — and he had trusted her. 

“ I’ll trust her at the worst,” he 
thought. “If all living creatures upon 
this wide earth joined their voices in 
one great cry of upbraiding, I’d stand 
by her to the very end, and defy them.” 

Aurora and Mrs. Lofthouse had fallen 
asleep upon opposite sofas ; Mrs. Powell 
was walking softly up and down the long 
drawing-room, waiting and watching — 
waiting for a fuller knowledge of this 
ruin which had come upon her employ- 
er’s household. 

Mrs. Mellish sprang up suddenly at 
the sound of her husband’s step as he 
entered the drawing-room. 

“ Oh, John,” she cried, running to 
him and laying her hands upon his 
broad shoulders, “thank Heaven you 
are come back I Now tell me all. Tell 
me all, John. I am prepared to hear 
any thing, no matter what. This is no 
ordinary accident. The man who was 
hurt — ” 

Her eyes' dilated as she looked at 
him, with a glance of intelligence that 
plainly said, “ I can guess what has 
happened.” 

“ The man was very seriously hurt, 
Lolly,” her husband answered quietly. 

“ What man ?” 

“ The trainer recommended to me by 
John Pastern.” 

She looked at him for a few mome;its 
in silence. 


AURORA FLOYD. 


185 


“ He is dead ?” she said, after that 
brief pause. 

“ He is.” 

Her head sank forward upon her 
breast, and she walked away, quietly 
returning to the sofa’ from which she 
had arisen. 

“ I am very sorry for him,” she said ; 

“ he was not a good man. I am sorry 
he was not allowed time to repent of 
his wickedness.” 

“ You knew him, then ?” asked Mrs. 
Lofthouse, who had expressed unbound- 
ed consternation at the trainer’s death. 

“Yes; he was in my father’s service 
some years ago.” 

Mr. Lofthouse’s carriage had been 
waiting ever since eleven o’clock, and 
the rector’s wife was only too glad to 
bid her friends good night, and to drive 
away from Mellish Park and its fatal 
associations ; so, though Colonel Mad- 
dison would have preferred stopping to 
smoke another cheroot while he discussed 
the business with John Mellish, he was 
fain to submit to feminine authority, and 
take his seat by his daughter’s side in 
the comfortable landau, which was an 
open or a close carriage as the conveni- 
ence of its proprietor dictated. The 
vehicle rolled away upon the smooth 
carriage-drive ; the servants closed the 
hall-doors, and lingered about, whisper- 
ing to each other, in little groups in the 
corridors and on the staircases, waiting 
until their master and mistress should 
have retired for the night. It was diffi- 
cult to think that the business of life was 
to go on just the same though a murder 
had been done upon the outskirts of the ! 
park, and even the housekeeper, a severe 
matron at ordinary times, yielded to the 
common influence, and forgot to drive 
the maids to their dormitories in the 
gabled roof. 

All was very quiet in the drawing- 
room where the visitors had left their, 
host and hostess to hug those ugly skele- 
tons which are put away in the presence 
of company. John Mellish walked slowly 
up and down the room. Aurora sat | 
staring vacantly at the guttering wax | 
candles in the old-fashioned silver I 
branches ; and Mrs. Powell, with her em- 
broidery in full working order, threaded 
her needles and snipped away the frag- 
ments of her delicate cotton as carefully 
as if there had been no such thing as 


crime or trouble in the world, and no 
higher purpose in life than the achieve- 
ment of elaborate devices upon French 
cambric. 

She paused now and then to utter 
some polite commonplace. She regretted 
such an unpleasant catastrophe ; she la- 
mented the disagreeable circumstances 
of the trainer’s death ; indeed, she in a 
manner inferred that Mr. Conyers had 
shown himself wanting in good taste and 
respect for his employer by the mode of 
his death ; but the point to which she 
recurred most frequently was the fact 
of Aurora’s presence in the grounds at 
the time of the murder. 

“I so much regret that you should 
have been out of doors at the time, my 
dear Mrs. Mellish,” she said; “and, as 
I should imagine, from the direction 
which you took on leaving the house, 
actually near the place where the unfor- 
tunate person met his death. It will be 
so unpleasant for you to have to appear 
at the inquest.” 

“Appear at the inquest !” cried John 
Mellish, stopping suddenly, and turning 
fiercely upon the placid speaker. “ Who 
says that my wife will have to appear at 
the inquest ?” 

“ I merely imagined it probable 
that—” 

“ Then you’d no business to imagine 
it, ma’am;” retorted Mr. Mellish, witU 
no very great show of politeness. “ My 
wife will not appear. Who should ask 
her to do so ? Who should wish her to 
do so ? What has she to do with to- 
night’s business ? or what does she know 
of it more than you or I, or any one 
else in this house ?” 

Mrs. Powell shrugged her shoulders. 

“I-thought that, from Mrs. Mellish’s 
previous knowledge of this unfortunate 
person, she might be able to throw some 
light upon his habits and associations,” 
she suggested mildly. 

“ Previous knowledge I” roared John. 
“What knowledge should Mrs. Mellish 
have of her father’s grooms ? What 
interest should she take in their habits 
or associations ?” 

“ Stop,” said Aurora, rising and lay- 
ing her hand lightly on her husband’s 
shoulder. “My dear impetuous John, 
why do you put yourself into a passion 
about this business ? If they choose to 
! call me as a witness, I will tell all I 


186 


AUROEA FLOYD. 


know about this man’s death ; wliicli is 
nothing but that I heard a shot fired 
while I was in the grounds.” 

She was very pale ; but she spoke 
with a quiet determination, a calm reso- 
lute defiance of the worst that fate could 
reserve for her. 

“ I will tell any thing that it is neces- 
sary to tell,” she said ; “I care very 
little what.” 

"With her hand still upon her hus- 
band’s shoulder, she rested her head on 
his breast, like some weary child nest- 
ling in its only safe shelter. 

Mrs. Powell rose, and gathered to- 
gether her embroidery in a pretty, lady- 
like receptacle of fragile wicker-work. 
She glided to the door, selected her 
candlestick, and paused on the thres- 
hold to bid Mr. and Mrs. Mellish good- 
night. 

“I am sure you must need rest after 
this terrible affair,” she simpered; “so 
I will take the initiative. It is nearly 
one o’clock. Good night.” 

If she had lived in the Thane of 
Cawdor’s family, she would have wished 
Macbeth and his wife a good night’s 
rest after Duncan’s murder ; and would 
have hoped they would sleep well ; she 
would have curtsied and simpered 
amidst the tolling of alarm-bells, the 
clashing of vengeful swords, and the 
blood-bedabbled visages of drunken 
grooms. It must have been the Scot- 
tish queen’s companion who watched 
with the truckling physician, and played 
the spy upon her mistress’s remorseful 
wanderings, and told how it was the 
conscience-stricken lady’s habit to do 
thus and thus ; no one but a genteel 
mercenary would have been so sleepless 
in the dead hours of the night, lying in 
wait for the revelation of horrible se- 
crets, the muttered clues to deadly mys- 
teries. 

“Thank God, she’s gone at last!” 
cried John Mellrsh, as the door closed 
very softly and very slowly ujjoh Mrs. 
Powell. “I hate that woman, Lolly.” 

Heaven knows I have never called 
John Mellish a hero; I have never set 
him up as a model of manly perfection 
or infallible virtue ; and if he is not 
faultless, if he has those flaws and blem- 
ishes which seem a constituent i)art of 
our imperfect clay, I make no apology 
for him ; but trust him to the tender 


mercies of those who, not being quite 
perfect themselves, will, I am sure, be 
merciful to him. He hated those who 
hated his wife, or did her any wrong, 
however small. He loved those who 
loved her. In the great ])ower of his 
wide affection, all self-esteem was anni- 
hilated. To love her was to love him ; 
to serve her was to do him treble ser- 
vice ; to praise her was to make him 
vainer than the vainest school-girl. He 
freely took upon his shoulders every 
debt that she owed, whether of love or 
of hate; and he was ready to ])ay either 
s])ecies of account to the uttermost far- 
tliing, and with no mean interest upon 
the sum total. “I hate that woman, 
Lolly,” he repeated ; “and I sha’n’t be 
able to stand her much longer.” 

Aurora did not answer him. She was 
silent for some moments, and when she 
did speak, it was evident that Mrs. 
Powell was very far away from her 
thoughts. 

“ My poor John,” she said, in a low 
soft voice, whose melancholy tenderness 
went straight to her husband’s heart; 
“ my dear, how happy we were together 
for a little time 1 How very happy we 
were, my poor boy !” 

“Always, Lolly,” he answered, “al- 
ways, my darling.” 

“No, no, no,” said Aurora, suddenly ; 
“only for a little while. What a hor- 
rible fatality has pursued us! what a 
frightful curse has clung to me ! The 
curse of disobedience, John; the curse 
of Heaven upon my disobedience. To 
think that this man should have been 
sent here, and that he — ” 

She stopped, shivering violently, and 
clinging to the faithful breast that shel- 
tered her. 

John Mellish quietly led her to her 
dre'ssing-roorn, and placed her in the 
care of her maid. 

. “Your mistress has been very much 
agitated by this night’s business,” he 
said to the girl ; “ keep her as quiet as 
you possibly can.” 

Mrs. Mellish’s bedroom, a comforta- 
ble and roomy aj)artraent, with a low 
ceiling and deep bay windows, opened 
into a morning room, in which it was 
John’s habit to read the newspaj^ers 
and sporting periodicals, while his wife 
wrote letters, drew pencil sketches of 
dogs and horses, or played with her 


AURORA FLOYD. 


187 

favorite Bow-wow. They had beeti very [ tered the fairv castle of his happiness, 
childish and idle and happy in this and laid it level with the ground ; and 
pretty chintz-hung chamber ; and going in his simple faith he looked into his 
into it to-night in utter desolation of 
heart, Mr. Mellish felt his sorrows all 


the more bitterly for the remembrance 
of those bygone joys. The shaded lamp 
was lighted on the morocco-covered 
writing table, and glimmered softly on 
the picture-frames, caressing the pretty 
modern paintings, the simple, domestic- 
story pictures which adorned the sub- 
dued gray walls. This wing of the old 
house had been refurnished for Aurora, 
and there was not a chair or a table in 
the room that had not been chosen by 
John Mellish with a special view to the 
comfort and the pleasure of his wife. 
The upholsterer had found him a liberal 
employer, the painter and the sculptor 
a noble patron. He had walked about 
the Royal Academy wdth a catalogue 
and a pencil in his hand, choosing all 
the “ pretty” pictures for the beautifica- 
tion of his wife’s rooms. A lady in a 
scarlet riding-habit and three-cornered 
beaver hat, a white pony, and a pack 
of greyhounds, a bit of stone terrace and 
sloping turf, a flower-bed, and a fount- 
ain, made poor John’s idea of a pretty 
j)icture ; and he had half a dozen varia- 
tions of such familiar subjects iu his spa- 
cious mansion. He sat down to-night, 
and looked hopelessly round the pleasant 
chamber, wondering whether Aurora 
and he would ever be happy again: 
wondering if this dark, mysterious, 
storm-threatening cloud would ever pass 
from the horizon of his life, and leave 
the future bright and clear. 

“ I have not been good enough,” he 
thought ; “ 1 have intoxicated myself 
with my happiness, and have made no 
return for it. What am I that 1 should 
have won the woman I love for my wife, 
while other men are laying down the 
best desires of their hearts a willing sac- 
rifice, and going out to fight the battle 
for their fellow-men ? What an indo- 
lent, good-for-nothing wretch I have 
been I How blind, how ungrateful, how 
undeserving I” 

John Mellish buried his face in his 
broad hands, and repented of the care- 
lessly happy life which he had led for 
one-and-thirty thoughtless years. He 
had been awakened from his unthinking 
bliss by a thunder-clap, that had shat- 


own life lor tlie cause of the ruin which 
had overtake!! him. Yes, it must be so ; 
he had not deserved his happiness, he 
had not earned his good fortune. Have 
you ever thought of this, ye simple 
country squires, who give blankets and 
beef to your poor neighbors in the cruel 
winter-time, who are good and gentle 
masters, faithful husbands, and tender 
fathers, and who lounge away your easy 
lives in the pleasant places of this beauti- 
ful earth ? Have you ever thought that, 
when all your good deeds have been 
gathered together and set in the balance, 
the sum of them will be very small when 
set against the benefits you have re- 
ceived ? It will be a very small per- 
centage which you will yield your Mas- 
ter for the ten talents entrusted to your 
care. Remember John Howard fever- 
stricken and dying, Mrs. Fry laboring 
in criminal prisons, Florence Nightin- 
gale iu the bare hospital chambers, in the 
close and noxious atmosphere amongst 
the dead and the dying. These are the 
people who return cent, per cent, for the 
gifts entrusted to them. These are the 
saints whose good deeds shine amongst 
the stars for ever and ever; these are 
the indefatigable workers who, when the 
toil and turmoil of the day are done, hear 
the Master’s voice in the still even time 
welcoming them to His rest. 

John Mellish, looking back at his life, 
humbly acknowledged that it had been a 
comparatively useless one. He had dis- 
tributed happiness to the people who 
had come into his way; but he had 
never gone out of his way to make 
people happy. I dare say that Dives 
was a liberal master to his own servants, 
although he did not trouble himself to 
look after the beggar who sat at his 
gates. The Israelite who sought instruc- 
tion from the lips of inspiration was will- 
ing to do his duty to his neighbor, but 
had to learn the broad signification of 
that familiar epithet; and poor John, 
like the rich young man, was ready to 
serve his master faithfully, but had yet 
to learn the manner of his service. 

“ If I could save her from the shadow 
of sorrow or disgrace, I would start to- 
morrow barefoot on a pilgrimage to 
Jerusalem,” he thought. “ What is 


188 


AURORA FLOYD. 


there that I would not do for her ? what 
sacrifice would seem too great ? what 
burden too heavy to bear 


CHAPTER XXYI. 

AT THE GOLDEN LION. 

Mr. William Dork, the constable, 
reached Doncaster at about a quarter- 
past one o’clock upon the morning after 
the murder, and drove straight to the 
Reindeer. That hotel had been closed 
for a couple of hours, and it was only 
by the exercise of his authority that Mr. 
Dork obtained access, and a hearing 
from the sleepy landlord. The young 
man who had driven Mr. Prodder was 
found after considerable difficulty, and 
came stumbling down the servants’ stair- 
case in a semi-somnolent state to answer 
the constable’s inquiries. He had driven 
the seafaring gentleman, whose name he 
did not know, direct to the Doncaster 
Station, in time to catch the mail-train, 
which started at 12.50. He had parted 
with the gentleman at the door of the 
station three minutes before the train 
started. 

This was all the information that Mr. 
Dork could obtain. If he had been a 
sharp London detective, he might have 
made his arrangements for laying hands 
upon the fugitive sailor at the first sta- 
tion at which the train stopped ; but 
being merely a simple rural functionary, 
he scratched his stubbled head, and 
stared at the landlord of the Reindeer 
in utter mental bewilderment. 

“ He was in a devil of a hurry, this 
chap,” he muttered rather sulkily. — 
“ What did he want to coot away for ?” 

The young man who had acted as 
charioteer could not answer this ques- 
tion. He only knew that the seafaring 
gentleman had promised him half a sov- 
ereign if he caught the mail-train, and 
that he had earned his reward. 

“ Well, I suppose it ain’t so very par- 
ticklar,” said Mr. Dork, sipping a glass 
of rum, which he had ordered for his re- 
freshment. “You’ll have to appear to- 
morrow, and you can tell nigh as much 
as t’other chap,” he added, turning to 
the young man. “You was with him 


when the shot were fired, and you warnT 
far when he found the body. You’ll 
have to appear and give evidence when- 
ever the inquest’s held. I doubt if it’ll 
be to-morrow ; for there won’t be much 
time to give notice to the coroner.” 

Mr. Dork wrote the young man’s 
name in his pocket-book, and the land- 
lord vouched for his being forthcoming 
when called upon. Having done thus 
much, the constable left the inn, after 
drinking another glass of rum, and re- 
freshing John Mellish’s horse with a 
handful of oats and a drink of water. 

He drove at a brisk pace back to the 
park-stables, delivered the horse and gig 
to the lad who had waited for his com- 
ing, and returned to his comfortable lit- 
tle dwetling in the village of Mesling- 
ham, about a mile from the park-gates. 

I scarcely know how to describe that 
long, quiet, miserable day which suc- 
ceeded the night of the murder. Aurora 
Mellish lay in a dull stupor, not able to ' 
lift her head from the pillows upon 
which it rested, scarcely caring to raise 
her eyelids from the aching eyes they \ 
sheltered. She was not ill, nor did she 
affect to be ill. She lay upon the sofa 
in her dressing-room, attended by her 
maid, and visited at intervals by John, 
who roamed hither and thither about 
the house and grounds, talking to innu- ’ 
merable people, and always coming to 
the same conclusion, namely, that the 
whole affair was a horrible mystery, and 
that he heartily wished the inquest well 
over. He had visitors from twenty 
miles round his house, — for the evil 
news had spread far and wide before 
noon, — visitors who came to condole 
and-to sympathise, and wonder, and spe- 
culate, and ask questions, until they 
fairly drove him mad. But he bore all 
very patiently. He could tell them 
nothing except that the business was as 
dark a mystery to him as it could be to 
them, and that he had no hope of find- 
ing any solution to the ghastly enigma. 
They one and all asked him the same 
question, “ Had any one a motive for 
killing this man ?” 

How could he answer them? He 
might have told them that if twenty 
persons had had a powerful motive for 
killing James Conyers, it was possible 
that a one-and-twentieth person who 
had no motive might have done tho 


AURORA FLOYD. 


deed. That species of argument which 
builds up any hypothesis out of a series 
of probabilities may, after all, lead very 
often to false conclusions. 

Mr. Mellish did not attempt to argues 
the question. He was too weary and 
sick at heart, too anxious for the inquest 
to be over, and he free to carry Aurora 
away with him, and turn his back upon 
the familiar place, which had been hate- 
ful to him ever since the trainer had 
crossed its threshold. 

“ Yes, my darling,” he said to his 
wife, as he bent over her pillow, “ I 
shall take you away to the south of 
France directly this business is settled. 
You shall leave the scene of all past as- 
sociations, all bygone annoyances. We 
will begin the world afresh.” 

“ God grant that we may be able to 
do so,” Aurora answered gravely. “ Ah, 
my dear, I cannot tell you that I am 
sorry for this man’s death. If he had 
died nearly two years ago, when I 
thought he did, how much misery he 
would have saved me I” 

Once in the course of that long sum- 
mer’s afternoon Mr. Mellish walked 
across the park to the cottage at the 
north gates. He could not repress a 
morbid desire to look upon the lifeless 
clay of the man whose presence had 
caused him such vague disquietude, such 
instinctive terror. He found the Softy 
leaning on the gate of the little garden, 
and one of the grooms standing at the 
door of the death-chamber. 

“ The inquest is to be held at the 
Golden Lion at ten o’clock to-morrow 
morning,” Mr. Mellish said to the men. 
“ You, Hargraves, will be wanted as a 
witness.” 

He walked into the darkened cham- 
ber. The groom understood what he 
came for, and silently withdrew the 
white drapery that covered the trainer’s 
dead face. 

Accustomed hands had done their 
awful duty. The strong limbs had been 
straightened. The lower jaw, which 
had dropped in the agony of sudden 
death, was supported by a linen band- 
age ; the eyelids were closed over the 
dark-violet eyes ; and the face, which 
had been beautil^ul in life, was even yet 
more beautiful in the still solemnity of 
death. The clay which in life had 
lacked so much in its lack of a beautiful 


189 

soul to light it from within, found its 
level in death. The worthless soul was 
gone, and the physical perfection that 
remained had lost its only blemish. The 
harmony of proportion, the exquisitely 
modelled features, the charms of detail, 
— all were left ; and the face which 
James Conyers carried to the grave was 
handsomer than that which had smiled 
insolent defiance upon the world in the 
trainer’s lifetime. 

John Mellish stood for some minutes 
looking gravely at that marble face. 

“ Poor fellow 1” thought the gener- 
ous-hearted young squire ; it was a 
hard thing to die so young. I wish he 
had never come here. I wish Lolly 
had confided in me, and let me made 
a bargain with this man to stop away 
and keep her secret. Her secret ! her 
father’s secret more likely. What secret 
could she have had that a groom was 
likely to discover ? It naay have been 
some mercantile business, some commer- 
cial transaction of Archibald Floyd’s, 
by which the old man fell into his ser- 
vant’s power. It would be only like 
ray glorious Aurora to take the burden 
upon her own shoulders, and to bear it 
bravely through every trial.” 

It was thus that John Mellish had 
often reasoned upon the mystery which 
divided him from his wife. He could 
not bear to impute even the shadow of 
evil to her. He could not endure to 
think of her as a poor helpless woman 
entrapped into the power of a mean- 
spirited hireling, who was only too will- 
ing to make his market out of her 
secrets. He could not tolerate such an 
idea as this ; and he sacrificed poor 
Archibald Floyd’s commercial integrity 
for the preservation of Aurora’s wo- 
manly dignity. Ah, how weak and im- 
perfect a passion is this boundless love ! 
How ready to sacrifice others for that 
one loved object, which must be kept 
spotless in our imaginations, though a 
hecatomb of her fellow-creatures are to 
be blackened and befouled for her justi- 
fication. If Othello could have estab- 
lished Desdemona’s purity by the sacra- 
fice of the reputation of every lady in 
Cyprus, do you think he would have 
spared the fair inhabitants of the 
friendly isle ? No ; he would have 
branded every one of them with infamy, 
if he conld by so doing have rehabili- 


190 


AURORA FLOY I). 


tatecl the wife he loved. John Hellish 
would not think ill of his wife. He 
resolutely shut his eyes to all damning 
evidence. He clung with a desperate 
tenacity to his belief in her purity, and 
only clung the more tenaciously as the 
proofs against her became more numer- 
ous. 

The inquest was held at a road-side 
inn, within a quarter of a mile of the 
north gates. A quiet little place, only 
frequented on market-days by the coun- 
try people going backwards and for- 
wards between Doncaster and the vil- 
lages beyopd Meslingham. The coroner 
and his jury sat in a long bare room, in 
which the frequenters of the Golden Lion 
were wont to play bowls in wet weather. 
The surgeon, Steeve Hargraves, Jarvis, 
the young man from the Reindeer, Wil- 
liam Dork the constable, and Mr. Hel- 
lish, were the only witnesses called ; but 
Colonel Maddison and Hr. Lofthouse 
were both present during the brief pro- 
ceedings. 

The inquiry into the circumstances of 
the trainer’s death/ occupied a very short 
time. Nothing was elicted by the brief 
examination of the witnesses which in 
any way led to the elucidation of the 
mystery. John Hellish was the last per- 
son interrogated, and he answered the 
questions put to him with prompt de- 
cision. There was one inquiry, however, 
which he was unable to answer, although 
it was a very simple one. Mr. Hayward, 
the coroner, anxious to discover so much 
of the history of the dead man as might 
lead eventually to the discovery of his 
murderer, asked Mr. Hellish if his trainer 
had been a bachelor or a married man. 

“ I really cannot answer that ques- 
tion,” said John ; “I should imagine 
that he was a single man, as neither he 
nor Mr. Pastern told me any thing to 
the contrary. Had he been married, he 
would have brought his wife with him, 
I should suppose. My trainer, Langley, 
was married when he entered my service, 
and his wife and children have occupied 
the premises over my stables for some 
years.” 

“You infer, then, that James Conyers 
was unmarried ?” 

“ Most decidedly.” 

“ And it is your opinion that he had 
made no enemies in the neighborhood ?” 


“ It is next to impossible that he could 
have done so.” 

“ To what cause, then, do you attrib- 
ute his death ?” 

“ To an unhappy accident. I can ac- 
count for it in no other way. The path 
through the wood is used as a public 
thoroughfare, and the whole of the plan- 
tation is known to be infested with 
poachers. It was past ten o’clock at 
night when the shot was heard. I should 
imagine that it was fired by a poacher 
whose eyes deceived him in the shadowy 
light.” 

The coroner shook his head. “You 
forget, Mr. Hellish,” he said, “that the 
cause of death was not an ordinary gun- 
shot wound. The shot heard was the 
report of a pistol, and the deceased was 
killed by a pistol-bullet.” 

John Hellish was silent. He had 
spoken in good faith as to his impres- 
sion respecting the cause of the trainer’s 
death. In the press and hurry, the hor- 
ror and confusion of the two last days, 
the smaller details of the awful event 
had escaped his memory. 

“ Do you know any one amongst your 
servants, Mr. Hellish,” asked the coro- 
ner, “whom you would consider likejy 
to commit an act of violence of this 
kind? Have you any one of an espe- 
cially vindictive character in your house- 
hold ?” 

“ No,” answered John decisively ; “ 1 
can answer for my servants as I would 
for myself. They were all strangers to 
this man. What motive could they pos- 
sibly have had to seek his death ?” 

Mr. Hayward rubbed his chin, and 
shook his head reflectively. 

“ There was this superannuated trainer 
whom you spoke of just now, Mr. Hel- 
lish,” he said. “I am well aware that 
the post of trainer in your stables is 
rather a good thing. A man may save 
a good deal of money out of his wages 
and perquisites with such a master as 
you. This former trainer may not have 
liked being superseded by the deceased. 
He may have felt some animus towards 
his successor.” 

“Lahgleyl” cried John Mellish; “he 
is as good a fellow as ever breathed. He 
was not superseded ; he resigned the ac- 
tive part of his work at his own wish, 
and he retained his full wages by mine. 


AURORA FLOYD. 


191 


/ 

The poor fellow has been confined to his 
bed for the last week.” 

“ Humph,” muttered the coroner. 
“ Then you can throw no light upon this 
business, Mr. Mellish ?” 

“ None whatever. I have written to 
Mr. Pastern, in whose stables the de- 
ceased was employed, telling him of the 
circumstances of the trainer’s death, and 
begging him to forward the information 
to any relative of the murdered man. I 
expect an answer by to-morrow’s post ; 
and I shall be happy to submit that an- 
swer to you.” 

Prior to the examination of the wit- 
nesses, the jurymen had been conducted 
to the north lod'ge, where they had be- 
held the mortal remains of James Con- 
yers. Mr. Morton had accompanied 
them, and had endeavored to explain to 
them the direction which the bullet had 
taken, and the manner in which, accord- 
ing to his own idea, the shot must have 
been fired. The jurymen who had been 
empanelled to decide upon this awful 
question were simple agriculturists and 
petty tradesmen, who grudged the day’s 
lost labor, and who were ready to ac- 
cept any solution of the mystery which 
might be suggested to them by the coro- 
ner. They hurried back to the Golden 
Lion, listened deferentially to the evi- 
dence and to Mr. Hayward’s address, 
retired to an adjoining apartment, where 
they remained in consultation for the 
space of about five minutes, and whence 
they emerged with a very rambling 
form of decision, which Mr. Hayward 
reduced into a verdict of wilful mur- 
der against some person or persons un- 
known. 

Very little had been said about the 
disappearance of the seafaring man who 
had carried the tidings of the murder to 
Mr. Mellish ’s house. Nobody for a 
moment imagined that the evidence of 
this missing witness might have thrown 
some ray of light upon the mystery of 
the trainer’s death. The seafaring man 
had been engaged in conversation with 
the young man from the Reindeer at the 
time when the shot was fired ; he was 
therefore not the actual murderer; and 
strangely significant as his hurried flight 
might have been to the acute intelligence 
of a well-trained metropolitan police- 
officer, no one amongst the rustic offi- 
cials present at the inquest attached any 


importance to the circumstance. Nor 
had Aurora’s name been once mentioned 
during the brief proceedings. Nothing 
had transpired which in any way re- 
vealed her previous acquaintance with 
James Conyers ; and John Mellish drew 
a deep breath, a long sigh of relief, as 
he left the Golden Lion and walked 
homewards. Colonel Maddison, Mr. Loft- 
house, and two or three other gentlemen 
lingered on the threshold of the little 
inn talking to Mr. Hayward, the coro- 
ner. 

The inquest was terminated ; the busi- 
ness was settled ; and the mortal re- 
mains of James Conyers could be carried 
to the grave at the pleasure of his late 
employer. All was over. The mystery 
of death and the secrets of life would be 
buried peacefully in the grave of the 
murdered man; and John Mellish was 
free to carry his wife away with him 
whithersoever he would ? Free, have I 
said? No; for ever and for ever the 
shadow of that bygone mystery would 
hang like a funeral pall between himself 
and the woman he loved. For ever and 
for ever the recollection of that ghastly 
undiscovered problem would, haunt him 
in sleeping and in waking, in the sun- 
light and in the darkness. His nobler 
nature, triumphing again and again over 
the subtle influences of damning sugges- 
tions and doubtful facts, was again and 
again shaken, although never quite de- 
feated. He fought the battle bravely, 
though it was a very hard one, and it 
was to endure perhaps to the end of 
time. That voiceless argument was for 
ever to be argued ; the spirits of Faith 
and Infidelity were for ever to be war- 
ring with each other in that tortured 
breast, until the end of life ; until he 
died, perhaps; with his head lying upon 
his wife’s bosom, with his cheek fanned 
by her warm breath ; but ignorant to 
the very last of the real nature of that 
dark something, that nameless and form- 
less horror with which he had wrestled 
so patiently and so long. 

“ I’ll take her away with me,” he 
thought ; “ and when we are divided by 
a thousand miles of blue water from the 
scene of her secret, I will fall on my 
knees before her, and beseech her to 
confide in me.” 

He passed by the north lodge with a 
shudder, and walked straight along the 


192 


AURORA FLOYD. 


high road towards the principal entrance 
of the park. He was close to the gates 
when he heard a voice, a strange sup- 
pressed voice, calling feebly to him to 
stop. He turned round and saw the 
So% making his way towards him with 
a slow, shambling run. Of all human 
beings, except perhaps that one who 
now lay cold and motionless in the 
darkened chamber at the north lo.dge, 
this Steeve Hargraves was the last 
whom Mr. Mellish cared to see. He 
turned with an angry frown upon the 
Softy, who was wiping the perspiration 
from his pale face with the ragged end 
of his neck-handkerchief, and panting 
hoarsely. 

“ What is the matter asked John. 
“What do you want with me?” 

“It’s th’ coronor,” gasped Stephen 
Hargraves — “th’ coroner and Mr. Loft- 
house, th’'parson. They want to speak 
to ye, sir, oop at the Loi-on.” 

“ What about ?” 

Steeve Hargraves gave a ghastly 
grin. 

“ I doan’t know, sir,” he whispered. 
“ It’s hardly loikely they’d tell me. 
There’s summat oop, though. I’ll lay; 
for Mr. Lofthouse was as whoite as 
ashes, and seemed strangely oopset 
about summat. Would you be pleased 
to step oop and speak to ’un directly, 
sir ? — that was my message.” 

“Yes, yes; I’ll go,” answered John 
absently. 

He- had taken his hat off, and was 
passing his hand over his hot forehead 
in a half-bewildered manner. He turned 
his back upon the Softy, and walked 
rapidly away, retracing his steps in the 
direction of the roadside inn. 

Stephen Hargraves stood staring after 
him until he was out of sight, and then 
turned and walked on slowly towards 
the turnstile leading into the wood. 

“ I know what they’ve found,” he 
muttered; “and 1 know what they want 
with him. He’ll be some time oop 
there ; so I’ll slip across the wood and 
tell her. Yes,” he paused, rubbing his 
hands, and laughing a slow voiceless 
laugh, which distorted his ugly face, 
and made him horrible to look upon — 
“yes, it will be nuts for me to tell 
her.” 


CHAPTER XXYII. 

“MY wife! my wife! what wife! 

I HAVE NO WIFE.” 

The Golden Lion had reassumed its 
accustomed air of rustic tranquillity 
when John Mellish returned to it. The 
jurymen had gone back to their differ- 
ent avocations, glad to have finished the 
business so easily; the villagers, who 
had hung about the inn to hear what 
they could' of the proceedings, were all 
dispersed; and the landlord was eating 
his dinner, with his wife and family, in 
the comfortable little bar-parlor. He 
put down his knife and fork as John 
entered the sanded bar, and left his meal 
to receive such a distinguished visitor. 

“ Mr. Hayward and Mr. Lofthouse 
are in the coffee-room, sir,” he said. 
“ Will you please to step this way ?” 

He opened the door of a carpeted 
room, furnished with shining mahogany 
tables, and adorned by half-a-dozen gau- 
dily-coloured prints of the Doncaster 
meetings, the great match between Vol- 
tigeur and Flying Dutchman, and other 
events which had won celebrity for the 
northern race-course. The coroner was 
sitting at the bottom of one of the long 
tables, with Mr. Lofthouse standing 
near him. William Dork, the Mesling- 
ham constable, stood near the door, 
with his hat in his hand, and with rather 
an alarmed expression dimly visible in 
his ruddy face. Mr. Hayward and Mr. 
Lofthouse were both very pale. 

One rapid glance was enough to show 
all this to John Mellish — enough to 
show him this, and something more : a 
basin of blood-stained water before the 
coroner, and an oblong piece of wet 
paper, which lay under Mr. Hayward’s 
clenched hand. 

“ What is the matter ? Why did you 
send for me ?” John asked. 

. Bewildered and alarmed as he had 
been by the message which had sum- 
moned him hurriedly back to the inn, he 
was still more so by the confusion evi- 
dent in the coroner’s manner as he an- 
swered this question. 

“ Pray sit down, Mr. Mellish,” he 
said. “ I — I — sent for you— ^at — the — 
the advice of Mr. Lofthouse, who — 
who, as a clergyman aiid a family man, 
thought it incumbent upon me — ” 


AURORA 

Reginald Lofthonse laid his hand upon 
the coroner’s arm with a warning ges- 
ture. Mr. Hayward stopped for a mo- 
ment, cleared Ids throat, and then con- 
tinued speaking, but in an altered tone. 

“I have had occasion to reprehend 
William Dork for a breach of duty, 
which, though I am aware it may have 
been, as he says, purely unintentional 
and accidental — ” 

“It was indeed, sir,” muttered the 
constable submissively. “If I’d ha’ 
know’d — ” 

“ The fact is, Mr. Mellish, that on the 
night of the murder. Dork, in examin- 
ing the clothes of the deceased, discov- 
ered a paper, which had been concealed 
by the unhappy man between the outer 
material and the lining of his waistcoat. 
This paper was so stained by the blood 
in which the breast of the waistcoat was 
absolutely saturated, that Dork was un- 
able to decipher a word of its contents. 
He therefore was quite unaware of the 
importance of the paper; and, in the 
hurry and confusion consequent on the 
very hard duty he has done for the last 
two days, he forgot to produce it at the 
inquest. He had occasion to make 
some memorandum in his pocket-book 
almost immediately after the prdict had 
been given,, and this circumstance re- 
called to his mind the existence of the 
))aper. He came immediately to me, 
and consulted me upon this very awk- 
ward business. I examined the docu- 
ment, washed away a considerable por- 
tion of the stains which had rendered it 
illegible, and have contrived to decipher 
the greater part of it.” 

“ The document is of some import- 
ance, then ?” John asked. 

He sat at a little distance from the 
table, with his head bent and his fingers 
rattling nervously against the side of his 
chair. He chafed horribly at the coro- 
ner’s pompous slowness. He suffered 
an agony of fear and bewilderment. 
Why had they called him back ? What 
was this paper ? How could it concern 
him ? 

“ Yes,” Mr, Hayward answered ; “ the 
document is certainly an important one. 

1 have shown it to Mr. Lofthonse, for 
the purpose of taking his advice upon 
the subject. I have not shown it to 
Dork; but I detained Dork in order 
that you may hear from him how and 
12 


FLOYD. 193 

where the paper was found, and why it 
was not produced at the inquest.” 

“ Why should I ask any questions 
upon the subject ?” cried John, lifting 
his head suddenly, and looking from the 
coroner to the clergyman. “ How should 
this paper concern me ?” 

“ I regret to say that it does concern 
you very materially, Mr. Mellish,” the 
rector answered gently. 

John’s angry spirit revolted against 
that gentleness. What right had they 
to speak to him like this ? Why did 
they look at him with those grave, pity- 
ing faces ? Why did they drop their 
voices to that horrible tone in which the 
bearers of evil tidings pave their way to 
the announcement of some overwhelming 
calamity ? 

“Let me see this paper, then, if it 
concerns me,” John said very carelessly. 
“Oh, my God!” he thought, “what is 
this misery that is coming upon me ? 
What is this hideous avalanche of trouble 
which is slowly descending to crush me ?” 

“You do not wish to hear any thing 
from Dork ?” asked the coroner. 

“ No, no 1” cried John savagely. “ I 
only want to see that paper.” He 
pointed as he spoke to the wet and 
blood-stained document under Mr. Hay- 
ward’s hand. 

“ You may go, then. Dork,” the coro- 
ner said quietly ; “ and be sure you do 
not mention this business to any one. 
It is a matter of purely private iiiterest, 
and has no reference to the murder. 
You will remember?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

The constable bowed respectfully to 
the three gentlemen and left the room. 
He was very glad to be so well out of 
the business. 

“They needn’t have called me,” he 
thought (to call in the northern patois 
is to scold, to abuse). “ They needn’t 
have said it was repri — what’s its name 
— to keep the paper. I might have 
burnt it if I’d liked, and said naught 
about it.” 

“Now, ’’’said John, rising and walking 
to the table as .the door closed upon the 
constable, “ now then, Mr. Hayward, let 
me see this paper. If it concerns me, 
or any one connected with me, I have a 
right to see it.” 

“A right which I will not dispute,” 
the coroner answered gravely, as he 


194 


AURORA FLOYD. 


hnnded the blood-stained document to 
Mr. Hellish. “ I only beg you to be- 
lieve in my heartfelt sympathy with you 
in this — ” 

“Let me alone !” cried John, waving 
the speaker away from him as he snatched 
the paper from his hand; “let me alone! 
Can’t you see that I’m nearly mad?” 

He walked to the window, and with 
his back to the coroner and Mr. Loft- 
house, examined the blotched and blotted 
document in his hands. He stared for 
a long time at those blurred and half- 
illegible lines before he became aware 
of their full meaning. But at last, at 
last, the signification of that miserable 
paper grew clear to him, and with a loud 
cry of anguish he dropped into the chair 
from which he had risen, and covered 
his face with his strong right hand. He 
held the paper in the left, crumpled and 
crushed by the convulsive pressure of his 
grasp. 

“My God !” he ejaculated, after that 
first cry of anguish, — “ my God ! I never 
thought of this. I never could have 
imagined this.” 

Neither the coroner nor the clergyman 
spoke. What could they say to him ? 
Sympathetic words could have no power 
to lessen such a grief as this; they would 
only fret and harass the strong man in 
his agony ; it was better to obey him ; 
it was far better to let him alone. 

He rose at last, after a silence that 
seemed long to the spectators of his 
grief. 

“ Gentlemen,” he said, in a loud, reso- 
lute voice that resounded through the 
little room, “I give you my solemn 
word of honor that when Archibald 
Floyd’s daughter married me, she be- 
lieved this man, James Conyers, to be 
dead.” 

He struck his clenched fist upon the 
table, and looked with proud defiance at 
the two men. Then, with his left hand, 
the hand that grasped the blood-stained 
paper, thrust into his breast, he walked 
out of the room. . He walked out of the 
room and out of the housh, but not 
homewards. A grassy lane, opposite 
the Golden Lion, led away to a great 
waste of brown turf, called Harper’s 
Common. John Hellish w^alked slowly 
along this lane, and out upon this quiet 
common-land, lonely even in the broad 
summer daylight. As he closed the five- 


barred gate at the end of the lane, and 
emerged upon the open waste, he seemed 
to shut the door of the world that lay 
behind him, and to stand alone with his 
great grief, under the low, sunless sum- 
mer sky. The dreary scene before him, 
and the gray atmosphere above his head, 
seemed in strange harmony with his 
grief. The reedy water-pools, unbroken 
by a ripple ; the barren verdure, burnt 
a dull grayish brown by the summer 
sun ; the bloomless heather, and the 
flowerless rushes, — all things upon which 
he looked, — took a dismal coloring from 
his own desolation, and seemed to make 
him the more desolate. The spoiled 
child of fortune, — the popular young 
squire, who had never been contradicted 
in nearly two-and-thirty years, — the 
happy husband, whose pride in his wife 
had touched upon that narrow boundary- 
line which separates the sublime from the 
ridiculous, — ah ! whither had they fled, 
all these shadows of the happy days that 
were gone ? They had vanished away ; 
they had fallen into the black gulf of the 
cruel past. The monster who devours 
his children had taken back these happy 
ones, and a desolate man was left in 
their stead. A desolate man, who looked 
at a broad ditch and a rushy bank, a few 
paces from where he stood, and thought, 
“Was it I who leapt that dike a month 
ago to gather forget-me-nots for my 
wife ?” 

He asked himself that question, 
reader, which we must all ask ourselves 
sometimes. Was he really that creature 
of the irrecoverable past ? Even as I 
write this I can see that common-land 
of which I write. The low sky, the 
sunburnt grass, the reedy water-pools, 
the flat landscape stretching far away on 
every side to regions that are strange to 
me. I can recall every object in that 
simple scene, — the atmosphere of the 
Sunless day, the sounds in the soft sum- 
mer air, the voices of the people near 
me ; I can recall every thing except 
— myself. This miserable ego is the 
one thing that I cannot bring back ; the 
one thing that seems strange to me ; the 
one tiling that I can scarcely believe in. 
If I went back to that northern common- 
land to-morrow, I should recognize 
every hillock, every scrap of furze, or 
patch of heather. The few years that 
have gone by since I saw it will have 


AURORA FLOYD. 


195 


made a scarcely perceptible difference in 
the features of the familiar place. The 
slow changes of nature, immutable in 
her harmonious law, will have done their 
work according to that unalterable law ; 
but this wretched me has undergone so 
complete a change, that if you could 
bring me back that alter ego of the past, 
I should be unable to recognize the 
strange creature ; and yet it is by no 
volcanic shocks, no rending asunder of 
rocky masses, no great convulsions, or 
terrific agonies of nature, that the 
change has come about; it is rather by 
a slow, monotonous wearing away of 
salient points, an imperceptible adulter- 
ation of this or that constituent part, an 
addition here, and a subtraction there, 
that the transformation takes place. It 
is hard to make a man believe in the 
physiologists, who declare that the hand 
which uses his pen to-day is not the same 
hand that guided the quill with which 
he wrote seven years ago. He finds it 
very difficult to believe this; but let him 
take out of some forgotten writing-desk, 
thrust into a corner of his lumber-room, 
those letters which he wrote seven years 
ago, and which were afterwards returned 
to him by the lady to whom they were 
addressed, and the question which he 
will ask himself, as he reads the faded 
lines, will most surely be, “Was it I who 
wrote this bosh ? Was it I who called 
a lady with white eyelashes ‘the guiding 
star of a lonely life’? Was it I who 
was ‘inexpressibly miserable’ with one 
s, and looked ‘ forward with unutterable 
anxiety to the party in Onslow Square, 
at which I once more should look into 
those soft blue eyes’ ? What party in 
Onslow Square ? Non mi recordo. 
‘ Those soft blue eyes’ were garnished 
with white lashes, and tlife lady to whom 
the letters were written jilted me to 
marry a rich soap-boiler.” Even the 
law takes cognisance of this wonderful 
transformation. Tlie debt which Smith 
contracts in 1850 is null and void in 
1857. The Smith of ’50 may have been 
an extravagant rogue ; the Smith of 
’57 may be a conscientious man, who 
would not cheat his creditors of a farth- 
ing. Shall Smith the second be called 
upon to pay the debts of Smith the first? 
I leave that question to Smith’s con- 
science and the metaphysicians. Surely 
the same law should hold good in breach 


of promise of marriage. Smith the 
first may have adored Miss Brown ; 
Smith the second may detest her. Shall 
Smith of 1857 be called upon to perform 
the contract entered into by that other 
Smith of 1850? The French criminal 
law goes still further. The murderer 
whose crime remains unsuspected for ten 
years can laugh at the police-officers 
who discover his guilt in the eleventh. 
Surely this must be because the real 
murderer is no longer amenable to jus- 
tice ; because the hand that struck the 
blow, and the brain that plotted the deed, 
are alike extinct. 

Poor John Mellish, with the world of 
the past crumbled at his feet, looked out 
at the blank future, and mourned for the 
people who were dead and gone. 

He flung himself at full length upon 
the stunted grass, and taking the crum- 
pled paper from his breast, unfolded it 
and smoothed it out before him. 

It was a certificate of marriage. The 
certificate of a marriage which had 
been solemnized at the parish-church of 
Dover, upon the 2d of July, 1856, be- 
tween James Conyers, bachelor, rough- 
rider, of London, son of Joseph Conyers, 
stage-coachman, and Susan, his wife, and 
Aurora Floyd, spinster, daughter of 
Archibald Floyd, banker, of Felden 
Woods, Kent. 


CHAPTER XXYIII. 
aurora’s flight. 

Mrs. Mellish sat in her husband’s 
room on the morning of the inquest, 
amongst the guns and fishing-rods, the 
riding-boots and hunting-whips, and all 
the paraphernalia of sportsmanship. She 
sat in a capacious wicker-work arm-chair 
close to the open window, with her head 
lying back upon the chintz-covered 
cushions, and her eyes wandering far 
away across the lawn and flower-beds 
towards tlie winding pathway by which 
it was likely John Mellish would return 
from the inquest’ at the Golden Lion. 

She had openly defied Mrs. Powell, 
and had locked the door of this quiet 
chamber upon that lady’s stereotyped 
civilities and sympathetic simperings. 

1 She had locked the door upon the outer 


AUEORA FLOYD. 


196 

world, and she sat alone in the pleasant 
window, the full-blown roses showering 
their scented petals upon her lap with 
every breath of the summer breeze, and 
the butterflies hovering about her. The 
old mastiff sat by her side, with his 
heavy head lying on her lap, and his big 
dim eyes lifted to her face. She sat 
alone, I have said ; but Heaven knows 
she was not companionless. Black care 
and corroding anxiety kept her faithful 
company, and would not budge from her 
side. What companions are so adhesive 
as trouble and sorrow 2 what associates 
so tenacious, what friends so watchful 
and untiring ? This wretched girl stood 
alone in the centre of a sea of troubles, 
fearful to stretch out her hands to those 
who loved her, lest she should drag them 
iuto that ocean which was rising to 
overwhelm her. 

“ Oh, if I could suffer alone,” she 
thought; “if I could suffer all this mis- 
ery alone, I think I would go through it 
to the last without complaining ; but the 
shame, the degradation, the anguish, will 
come upon others more heavily than 
upon me. What will they not suffer ? 
what will they not endure if the wicked 
madness of my youth should become 
known to the world ?” 

Those others of whose possible grief 
and shame she thought with such cruel 
torture, were her father and John Hel- 
lish. Her love for her husband had not 
lessened by one iota her love for that in- 
dulgent father, on whom the folly of her 
girlhood had brought such bitter suf- 
fering. Her generous heart was wide 
enough for both. She had acknowledged 
no “ divided duty,” and would have re- 
pudiated any encroachment of the new 
affection upon the old. The great river 
of her love widened into an ocean, and 
embraced a new shore with its mighty 
tide ; but that far-away source of child- 
hood, from which affection first sprang 
in its soft infantine purity, still gushed 
in crystal beauty from its unsullied 
spring. She would perhaps scarcely 
have recognized the coldly-measured af- 
fection of mad Lear’s youngest daughter 
— the affection which could divide itself 
with mathematical precision between 
father and husband. Surely love is too 
pure a sentiment to be so weighed in the 
balance. Must we. subtract something 
from the original sum when we are called 


upon to meet a new demand? or has not 
affection rather some magic power by 
which it can double its capital at any 
moment when there is a run upon the 
bank ? When Mrs. John Anderson be- 
comes the mother of six children, she 
does not say to her husband, “ My dear 
John, I shail be compelled to rob you 
of six-tenths of my affection in order to 
provide for the little ones.” No; the 
generous heart of the wife grows larger 
to meet the claims upon the mother, as 
the girl’s heart expanded with the new 
affection of the wife. Every pang of 
grief which Aurora felt for her husband’s 
misery was doubled by the image of her 
father’s sorrow. She could not divide 
these two in her own mind. She loved 
them, and was sorry for them, with an 
equal measure of love and sorrow. 

“If — if the truth should be discovered 
at this inquest,” she thought, “I can 
never see my husband again ; I can 
never look in his face any more. I will 
run away to the end of the world, and 
hide myself from him for ever.” 

She had tried to capitulate with her 
fate ; she had endeavored to escape the 
full measure of retribution, and she had 
failed. She had done evil that good 
might come of it, in the face of that 
command which says that all such evil- 
doing shall be wasted sin, useless in- 
iquity. She had deceived John Hellish 
in the hope that the veil of deception 
might never be rent in twain, that the 
truth might be undiscovered to the end, 
and the man she loved spared from cruel 
shame and grief. But the fruits of that 
foolish seed, sown long ago in the day 
of her disobedience, had grown up 
around her and hedged her in upon 
every side, and she had been powerless 
to cut a pathway for herself through the 
noxious weeds that her own hands had 
planted. 

She sat with her w’atch in her hand, 
and her eyes wandered every now and 
then from the gardens before her to the 
figures on the dial. John Hellish had 
left the house at a little after nine o’clock, 
and it was now nearly two. He had 
told her that the inquest would be over 
in a couple of hours, and that he would 
hurry home directly it was finished to 
tell her the result. What would be the 
result of that inquest? What inquiries 
might be made ? what evidence might, 


AURORA FLOYD. 


by some unhappy accident, be produced 
to compromise or to betray her ? She 
sat in a dull stupor, waiting; to receive 
her sentence. What would it be ? Con- 
demnation or release ? If her secret 
should escape detection, if James Con- 
yers should be allowed to carry the story 
of his brief married life to the grave, 
what relief, what release for the wretched 
girl, whose worst sin had been to mis- 
take a bad man for a good one ; the ig- 
norant trustfulness of a child who is 
ready to accept any shabby pilgrim for 
an exiled nobleman or a prince in 
disguise. 

It was half-past two, when she was 
startled by the sound of a shambling 
footstep upon the graveled pathway un- 
derneath the verandah. The footstep 
slowly shuffled on for a few paces ; then 
paused, then shuffled on again ; and at 
last a face that she hated made itself 
visible at the angle of the window, op- 
posite to that against which she sat. It 
was the white face of the Softy, which 
was poked cautiously forward a few 
inches within the window-frame. The 
mastiff sprang up with a growl, and 
made as if he would have flown at that 
ugly leering face, which looked like one 
of the hideous decorations of a Gothic 
building; but Aurora caught the ani- 
mal’s collar with both her hands, and 
dragged him back. 

“ Be quiet. Bow-wow,” she said ; 
'‘quiet, boy, quiet.” 

She still held him with one firm hand, 
soothing him with the other. “ What 
do you want?” she asked, turning upon 
the Softy with a cold icy grandeur of 
disdain, which made her look like Nero’s 
wdfe defying her false accusers. “What 
do you want with me ? Your master is 
dead, and you have no longer an excuse 
for coming here. You have been for- 
bidden the house and the grounds. If you 
forget this another time, I shall request 
Mr. Mellish to remind you.” 

She lifted her disengaged hand and 
laid it upon the window-sash ; she was 
going to close the window, when Ste- 
phen Hargraves stopped her. 

“ Don’t be in such a hoorry,” he said ; 
“ I want to speak to you. I’ve coom 
straight from th’ inquest. I thought 
you might want to know all about it. I 
coom out o’ friendliness, though you did 
pay into me with th’ horsewhip.” 


197 

Aurora’s heart beat tempestuously 
against her aching breast. Ah, what 
hard duty that poor heart had done 
lately ; what icy burdens it had borne, 
what horrible oppression of secrecy and 
terror had weighed upon it, crushing 
out all hope and peace I An agony of 
suspense and dread convulsed that tor- 
tured heart as the Softy tempted hei, 
tempted her to ask him the issue of the 
inquest, that she might receive from his 
lips the sentence of life or death. She 
little knew how much of her secret this 
man had discovered ; but she knew that 
he hated her, and that he suspected 
enough to know his power of torturing 
her. 

She lifted her proud head and looked 
at him with a steady glance of defiance. 
“ I have told you that your presence is 
disagreeable,” she said. “Stand aside, 
and let me shut the window.” 

The Softy grinned insolently, and 
holding the window-frame with one of 
his broad hands, put his head into the 
room. Aurora rose to leave the window ; 
but he laid the other hand upon her 
wrist, which shrunk instinctively from 
contact with his hard horny palm. 

“ I tell you I’ve got summat particklar 
to say to you,” he whispered. “You 
shall hear all about it. I was one of 
th’ witnesses at th’ inquest, and I’ve 
been hangin’ about ever since, and I 
know every thing.” 

Aurora flung her head back disdain- 
fully, and tried to wrench her wrist from 
that strong grasp. 

“ Let me go,” she said. “You shall 
suffer for this insolence when Mr. Mel- 
lish returns.” 

“ But he won’t be back just yet 
awhile,” said the Softy, grinning. “ He’s 
gone back to the Golden Lion. Th’ 
coroner and Mr. Lofthouse, th’ parson, 
sent for him to tell him summat — sum- 
mat about youV hissed Mr. Stephen 
Hargraves, with his dry white lips close 
to Aurora’s ear. 

“ What do you mean ?” cried Mrs 
Mellish, still writhing in the Softy’s 
grasp, still restraining her dog from fly- 
ing at him with her disengaged hand : 
“ what do you mean ?” 

“ I mean what I say,” answered Steeve 
Hargraves ; “ I mean that it’s all found 
out. They know every thing ; and 
they’ve sent for Mr. Mellish to tell him. 


198 


AURORA FLOYD. 


They’ve sent for him to tell him what 
you was to him that’s dead.” 

A low wail broke from Aurora’s lips. 
She had expected to hear this perhaps ; 
she had at any rate dreaded it ; she had 
only fought against receiving the tidings 
from this man ; but he had conquered 
her; he had conquered her as the dogged 
obstinate nature, however base, however 
mean, will always conquer the generous 
and impulsive soul. He had secured his 
revenge, and had contrived to be the 
witness of her agony. He released her 
wrist as he finished speaking, and looked 
at her — looked at her with an insolently 
triumphant leer in his small eye;^ 

She drew herself up, proudly still, 
proudly and bravely in spite of all, but 
with her face changed — changed from 
its former expression of restless pain to 
the dull blankness of despair. 

“ They found th’ certificate,” said the 
Softy. “ He’d carried it about with him 
sewed up in’s waistco-at.” 

The certificate ! Heaven have pity 
upon her girlish ignorance I She had 
never thought of that; she had never 
remembered that miserable scrap of pa- 
per which was the legal evidence of her 
folly. She had dreaded the presence of 
that husband who had arisen, as if from 
the grave, to pursue and torment her ; 
but she had forgotten that other evidence 
of the parish-register, which might also 
arise against her at any moment. She 
had feared the finding of something — 
some letter — some })icture — some acci- 
dental record amongst the possessions 
of the murdered man ; but she had never 
thought of this most conclusive evi- 
dence, this most incontrovertible proof. 
She put her hand to her head, trying to 
realize the full horror of her position. 
The certificate of her marriage with her 
father’s groom was in the hands of John 
Mellish. 

“What will he think of me?” she 
thought. “ How would he ever believe 
me if I were to tell him that I had re- 
ceived what I thought positive evidence 
of James Conyers’ death a year before 
my second marriage ? How could he 
believe in me? 1 have deceived him 
too cruelly to dare to ask his confi- 
dence.” 

She looked about, trying to collect 
herself, trying to decide upon what she 
ought to do, and in her bewilderment 


and agony forgot for a moment the 
greedy eyes which were gloating upon 
her misery. But she remembered her- 
self presently, and turning sternly upon 
Stephen Hargraves, spoke to him with 
a voice which was singularly clear and 
steady. 

“You have told me all that you have 
to tell,” she said ; “ be so good as to 
get out of the way while I shut the 
window.” 

The Softy drew back and allowed her 
to close the sashes ; she bolted the win- 
dow, and drew down the Venetian 
blind, effectually shutting out her spy, 
who crept away slowly and reluctantly 
towards the shrubbery, through which 
he could make his way safely out of the 
grounds. 

“ I’ve paid her out,” he muttered, as 
he shambled off under the shelter of the 
young trees; “I’ve paid her out pretty 
tidy. It’s almost better than money,” 
he said, laughing silently — “ it’s almost 
better than money to pay off them kind 
of debts.” 

Aurora seated herself at John Mel- 
lish’s desk, and wrote a few hurried 
lines upon a sheet of paper that lay. 
uppermost amongst letters and bills. 

“ My dear Love,” she wrote — “ I 
cannot remain here to see you after the 
discovery which has been made to-day. 

I am a miserable coward ; and I cannot 
meet your altered looks, I cannot hear 
your altered voice. I have no hope that 
you can have any other feeling for me 
than contempt and loathing. But on 
some future day, when I am far away 
from you, and the bewilderment of my 
present misery has grown less, I will 
write and explain every thing. Think 
of me mercifully, if you can ; and if you 
can believe that, in the wicked conceal- 
ments of the last few weeks, the main- 
spring of my conduct has been my love 
for you, you will only believe the truth. 
God bless you, my best and truest. 
The pain of leaving you for ever is less 
than the pain of knowing that you had 
ceased to love me. Good by.” 

She lighted a taper, and sealed the 
envelope which contained this letter. 

“The spies who hate and watch me 
shall not read this,” she thought, as she 
wrote John’s name upon the envelope. 

^She left the letter upon the desk, and, 
rising from her seat, looked round the 


AURORA FLOYD. 


199 


room — looked with a long, lingering 
gaze, that dwelt on each familiar object. 
How happy she had been amongst all 
that masculine litter I how happy with 
the man she had believed to be her hus- 
band ! how innocently happy before the 
coming down of that horrible storm- 
cloud which had overwhelmed them 
both ! She turned away with a shudder. 

“ I have brought disgrace and misery 
upon all who have loved me,” she 
thought. “ If I had been less coward- 
ly — if I had told the truth — all this 
might have been avoided if I had con- 
fessed the truth to Talbot Bulstrode.” 

She paused at the mention of that 
name. 

“I will go to Talbot,” she thought. 
“ He is a good man. I will go to him ; 
I shall have no shame now in telling 
him all. He will advise me what to do ; 
he will break this discovery to my poor 
father.” 

Aurora had dimly foreseen this misery 
when she had spoken to Lucy Bulstrode 
at Felden; she had dimly foreseen a 
day in which all would be discovered, 
and she would fly to Lucy to ask for a 
shelter. 

She looked at her watch. 

“A quarter past three,” she said. 
“ There is an express that leaves Don- 
caster at five. I could walk the distance 
in the time.” 

She unlocked the door, and ran up- 
stairs to her own rooms. There was no 
one in the dressing-room ; but her maid 
was in the bedroom, arranging some 
dresses in a huge wardrobe. 

Aurora selected her plainest bonnet 
and a large gray cloak, and quietly put 
them on before the cheval glass in one 
of the pretty French windows. The 
maid, busy with her own work, did not 
take any particular notice of her mis- 
tress’s actions ; for Mrs. Mellish was 
accustomed to wait upon herself, and 
disliked any officious attention. 

“ How pretty the rooms look !” Au- 
rora thought, with a weary sigh ; “ how 
simple and countrified ! It was for me 
that the new furniture was chosen, for 
me that the bathroom and conservatory 
were built.” 

She looked through the vista of 
brightly-carpeted rooms. 

Would they ever seem as cheerful as 
they had once done to their master? 


Would he still occupy them, or would 
he lock the doors, and turn his back 
upon the old house in which he had 
lived such an untroubled life for nearly 
two-and-thirty years ? 

“ My poor boy, my poor boy !” she 
thought. “Why was I ever born to 
bring such sorrow upon him ?” 

There was no egotism in her sorrow 
for his grief. She knew that he had 
loved her, and she knew that this part- 
ing would be the bitterest agony of his 
life ; but in the depth of mortification 
which her own womanly pride had under- 
gone, she could not look beyond the 
present shame of the discovery made 
that day, to a future of happiness and 
release. 

“ He will believe that I never loved 
him,” she thought. “ He will believe 
that he was the dupe of a designing 
woman, who wished to regain the posi- 
tion she had lost. What will he not 
think of me that is base and horrible?” 

The face which she saw in the glass 
was very pale and rigid ; the large dark 
eyes dry and lustrous, the lips drawn 
tightly down over the white teeth. 

“ I look like a woman who could cut 
her throat in such a crisis as this,” she 
thought. “ How often I have won- 
dered at the desperate deeds done by 
women I I shall never wonder again.” 

She unlocked her dressing-case, and 
took a couple of bank-notes and some 
loose gold from one of the drawers. 
She put these in her purse, gathered 
her cloak about her, and walked towards 
the door. 

She paused on the threshold to speak 
to her maid, who was still busy in the 
inner room. 

“ I am going into the garden. Par- 
sons,” she said ; “ tell Mr. Mellish that 
there is a letter for him in his study.” 

The room in which John kept his 
boots and racing accounts was called a 
“ study” by the respectful household. 

The dog Bow-wow lifted himself 
lazily from his tiger -skin rug as Aurora 
crossed the hall, and came sniffing about 
her, and endeavored to follow her out 
of the house. But she ordered him 
back to his rug, and the submissive 
animal obeyed her, as he had often done 
in his youth, when his young mistress 
used to throw her doll into the water at 
Felden, and send the faithful mastiff to 


* 


200 


AURORA FLOYD. 


rescue that fair-haired waxen favorite. 
He obeyed her now, but a little re- 
luctantly ; and he watched her suspi- 
ciously as she descended the flight of 
steps before the door. 

She walked at a rapid pace across 
the lawn, and into the shrubbery, going 
steadily southwards, though by that 
means she made her journey longer; for 
the north lodge lay towards Doncaster. 
In her way through the shrubbery, she 
met two people, who walked closely 
side by side, engrossed in a whispering 
conversation, and who both started and 
changed countenance at seeing her. 
These two people were the Softy and 
Mrs. Powell. 

“ So,” she thought, as she passed this 
strangely-matched pair, “ my two ene- 
mies are laying their heads together to 
plot my misery. It is time that I left 
Hellish Park.” 

She went out into a little gate,, lead- 
ing into some meadows. Beyond these 
meadows there was a long shady lane 
that led behind the house to Doncaster. 
It was a path rarely chosen by any one 
of the household at the park, as it was 
the longest way to the town. 

Aurora stopped at about a mile from 
the house which had been her own, and 
looked back at the picturesque pile of 
building, half hidden under the lux- 
uriant growth of a couple of centuries. 

“ Good by, dear home, in which I was 
an impostor and a cheat,” she said ; 
“ good by, for ever and for ever, my 
own dear love.” 

While Aurora uttered these few words 
of passionate farewell, John Hellish lay 
upon the sunburnt grass, staring ab- 
sently at the still waterpools under the 
gray sky, — pitying her, praying for her, 
and forgiving her from the depth of his 
honest heart. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

JOHN MELLTSII FINDS HIS HOME 
DESOLATE. 

The sun was low in the western sky, 
and distant village clocks had struck 
seven, when John Hellish walked slowly 
■away from that lonely waste of stunted 


grass called Harper’s Common, and 
strolled homewards in the peaceful eveii- 
irfg. 

The Yorkshire squire was still very 
pale. He walked with his head bent 
forward upon his breast, and the hand 
that grasped the crumpled paper thrust 
into the bosom of his waistcoat ; but a 
hopeful light shone in his eyes, and the 
rigid lines of his mouth had relaxed into 
a tender smile — a smile of love and for- 
giveness. Yes, he had prayed for her 
and forgiven her, and he \Vas at peace. 
He had pleaded her cause a hundred 
times in the dull quiet of that summer’s 
afternoon, and had excused her and for- 
given her. Not lightly, Heaven is a 
witness ; not without a sharp and cruel 
struggle, that had rent his heart with 
tortures undreamed of before. 

This revelation of the past was such 
bitter shame to him ; such horrible 
degradation ; such irrevocable infamy. 
His love, his idol, his empress, his god- 
dess — it was of her he thought. By 
what hellish witchcraft had she been 
ensnared into the degrading alliance, 
recorded in this miserable scrap of 
paper ? The pride of five unsullied 
centuries arose, fierce and ungovernable, 
in the breast of the country gentleman, 
to resent this outrage upon the woman 
he loved. 0 God, had all his glorifica- 
tion of her been the vain boasting of a 
fool who had not known what he talked 
about ? He was answerable to the 
world for the past as well as for the 
present. He had made an altar for his 
idol, and had cried aloud to all who 
came near her to kneel down and per- 
form their worship at her shrine; and 
he was answerable to these people for 
the purity of their divinity. He could 
not think of her as less than the idol 
which -his love had made her — perfect, 
unsullied, unassailable. Disgrace where 
she was concerned knew in his mind no 
degrees. 

It was not his own humiliation he 
thought of when his face grew hot as 
he imagined the talk there would be in 
the county if this fatal indiscretion of 
Aurora’s \youth ever became generally 
known ; it was the thought of her 
shame that stung him to the heart. He 
never once disturbed himself with any 
prevision of the ridicule which was 
likely to fall upon him. 


AURORA FLOYD. 


201 


It was here that John Mellish and 
Talbot Bulstrode. were so widely dif- 
ferent in their manner of loving and 
suffering. Talbot had sought a wife 
who should reflect honor upon himself, 
and had fallen away from Aurora at the 
first trial of his faith, shaken with horri- 
ble apprehensions of his own danger. 
But John Mellish had submerged his 
very identity into that of the woman he 
loved. She was his faith and his wor- 
ship, and it was for her glory that he 
wept in this -cruel day of shame. The 
wrong which he found so hard to for- 
give was not her wrong against him ; 
but that other and more fatal wrong 
against herself. I have said that his 
aflection was universal, and partook of 
all the highest attributes of that sub- 
lime self-abnegation which we call Love. 
The agony which he felt to-day was the 
agony wliich Archibald Floyd had suf- 
fered years before. It was vicarious 
torture, endured for Aurora, and not for 
himself ; and in his struggle against 
that sorrowful anger which he felt for 
her folly, every one of her perfections 
took up arms upon the side of his indig- 
nation, and fought against their own 
mistress. Had she been less beautiful, 
less queenly, less generous, great, and 
noble, he might have forgiven her that 
self-inflicted shame more easily. But 
she was so perfect ; and how could she, 
bow could she ? 

He unfolded the wretched paper half- 
a-dozen times, and read and re-read 
every word of that commonplace legal 
document, before he could convince 
himself that it was not some vile for- 
gery, concocted by James Conyers for 
purposes of extortion. But he prayed 
for her, and forgave her. He pitied 
her with more than a mother’s tender 
pity, with more than a sorrowful father’s 
anguish. 

“My poor dear I” he said, “my poor 
dear ! she was only a school-girl when 
this certificate was first written; an in- 
nocent child, ready to believe in any lies 
told her by a villain.” 

A dark frown obscured the York- 
shireman’s brow as he thought this ; a 
frown that w'ould have promised no 
good to Mr. James Conyers, had not 
the trainer* passed out of the reach of 
all earthly good and evil. 

“Will *God have mercy upon a wretch 


like that?” thought John Mellish; 

“ will that man be forgiven for having 
brought disgrace and misery upon a 
trusting girl?” 

It will perhaps be wondered at that 
John Mellish, who suffered his servants 
to rule in his household, and allowed his 
butler to dictate to him what wines lie 
should drink, who talked freely to his 
grooms, and bade his trainer sit in his 
presence — it will be wondered at, per- 
haps, that this frank, free-spoken, simple- 
mannered young man should have felt so 
bitterly the shame of Aurora’s unequal 
marriage. It was a common saying in 
Doncaster, that Squire Mellish of the 
Park had no pride; that he would clap 
poor folks on the shoulder and give 
them good-day as he lounged in the 
quiet street; that he would sit upon 
the cornchandler’s counter, slashing his 
hunting-whip upon those popular tops — 
about which a legend was current, to 
the effect that they were always cleaned 
with champagne — and discussing the 
prospects of the September Meeting ; 
and that there was not within the three 
Ridings a better landlord or a nobler- 
hearted gentleman. And all this was 
perfectly true. John Mellish was en- 
tirely without personal pride; but there 
was Unother pride, which was wholly 
inseparable from his education and po- 
sition, and this was the pride of caste. 

He was strictly conservative ; and al- 
though he was ready to talk to his good 
friend the saddler, or his trusted retainer 
the groom, as freely as he would have 
held converse with his equals, he would 
have opposed all the strength of his 
authority against the saddler had that 
honest tradesman attempted to stand for 
his native town, and would have annihi- 
lated the groom with one angry flash of 
his bright blue eyes had the servant in- 
fringed by so much as an inch upon the 
broad extent of territory that separated 
him from his master. 

The struggle was finished before John 
Mellish arose from the brown turf and 
turned towards the home which he had 
left early that morning, ignorant of the 
great trouble that was to fall upon him, 
and only dimly conscious of some dark « 
foreboding of the coming of an unknown 
horror. The struggle was over, and there 
was now only hope in his heart — the 
hope of clasping his wife to his breast, 


202 


AURORA FLOYD. 


and comforting her for all the past. 
However bitterly he might feel the hu- 
miliation of this madness of her igno- 
rant girlhood, it was not for him to re- 
mind her of it ; his duty was to confront 
the world’s slander or the world’s ridi- 
cule, and oppose his own breast to the 
storm, while she was shielded by the 
great shelter of his love. His heart 
yearned for some peaceful foreign land, 
in which his idol would be faraway from 
all who could tell her secret, and where 
she might reign once more glorious and 
unapproachable. He was ready to im- 
pose any cheat upon the world, in his 
greediness of praise and worship for 
her ; for her. How tenderly he thought 
of her, walking slowly hom'ewards in 
that tranquil evening ! He thought of 
her waiting to hear from him the issue 
of the inquest, and he reproached him- 
self for his neglect when he remembered 
how long he had been absent. 

“ But my darling will scarcely be un- 
easy,” he thought ; “ she will hear all 
about the inquest from some one or 
other, and she will think that I have 
gone into Doncaster on business. She 
will know nothing of the finding of this 
detestable certificate. No one need know 
of it. Lofthouse and Hayward are 
honorable men, and they will keep my 
poor girl’s secret; they will keep the 
secret of her foolish youth — my poor, 
poor girl !” 

He longed for that moment which he 
fancied so near ; the moment in which 
he should fold her in his arms and say, 
“ My dearest one, be at peace ; there is 
no longer any secret between us. Hence- 
forth your sorrows are ray sorrows, and 
it is hard if I cannot help you to carry 
the load lightly. We are one, my dear. 
For the first time since our wedding-day, 
we are truly united.” 

He expected to find Aurora in his own 
room, for she had declared her intention 
of sitting there all day; and he ran 
across the broad lawn to the rose-sha- 
dowed verandah that sheltered his favor- 
ite retreat. The blind was drawn down 
and the window bolted, as Aurora had 
bolted it in her wish to exclude Mr. 
Stephen Hargraves. He knocked at 
the Window, but there was no answer. 

“Lolly has grown tired of waiting,” 
he thought. 

The second dinner-bell rang in the 


hall while Mr. Mellish lingered outside 
this darkened window. The common- 
place sound reminded him of his social 
duties. 

“I must wait till dinner is over, I 
suppose, before I can talk to my darl- 
ing,” he thought. “I must go through 
all the usual business, for the edification 
of Mrs. Powell and the servants, before 
I can take my darling to my breast, and 
set her mind at ease for ever.” 

John Mellish submitted himself to the 
indisputable force of those ceremonial 
laws which we have made our masters, 
and he was prepared to eat a dinner for 
which he had no appetite, and wait two 
hours for that moment for whose coming 
his soul yearned, rather than provoke 
Mrs. Powell’s curiosity by any deviation 
from the common course of events. 

The windows of the drawing-room 
were open, and he saw the glimmer of 
a pale muslin dress at one of them. It 
belonged to Mrs. Powell, who was sit- 
ting in a contemplative attitude, gaziug 
at the evening sky. 

She was not thinking of that western 
glory of pale crimson and shining gold. 
She was thinking that if John Mellish 
cast off the wife who had deceived him, 
and who had never legally been his wife, 
the Yorkshire mansion would be a fine 
place to live in ; a fine place for a house- 
keeper who knew how to obtain influence 
over her master, and who had the secret 
of his married life and his wife’s dis- 
grace to help her on to power. 

“ He’s such a blind, besotted fool 
about her,” thought the ensign’s widow, 
“that if he breaks with her to-morrow, 
he’ll go on loving her just the same, and 
he’ll do any thing to keep her secret. 
Let it work which way it will, they’re in 
my power — they’re both in my power ; 
and I’m no longer a poor dependent, to 
be sent away, at a quarter’s notice, when 
it pleases them to be tired of me.” 

The bread of dependence is not a 
pleasant diet; but there are many ways 
of eating the same food. Mrs. Powell’s 
habit was to receive all favors grudg- 
ingly, as she would have given, had it 
been her lot to give instead of to receive. 
She measured others by her own narrow 
gauge, and was powerless to comprehend 
or believe in the frank impulses of a 
generous nature. She knew that she 
was a useless member of poor John’s 


AURORA 

household, and that the young squire 
could have easily dispensed with her 
presence. She knew, in short, that she 
w^as retained by Aurora’s pity for her 
friendlessness ; and having neither grati- 
tude nor kindly feelings to give in return 
for her comfortable shelter, she resented 
her own poverty of nature, and hated 
her entertainers for their generosity. It 
is a property of these narrow natures so 
to resent the attributes they can envy, 
but cannot even understand ; and Mrs. 
Powell had been far more at ease in 
households in which she had been treated 
as a lady-like drudge than she had ever 
been at Hellish Park, where she was re- 
ceived as an equal and a guest. She had 
eaten the bitter bread upon which she bad 
lived so long in a bitter spirit; and her 
w'hole nature had turned to gall from the 
influence of that disagreeable diet. A 
moderately generous person can bestow 
a favor, and bestow it well ; but to re- 
ceive a boon with perfect grace requires 
a far nobler and more generous nature. 

John Hellish approached the open 
window at which the ensign’s widow was 
seated, and looked into the room. 
Aurora was not there. The long saloon 
seemed empty and desolate. The de- 
corations of the temple looked cold 
and dreary, for the deity was absent. 

“No one here !” exclaimed Hr. Hel- 
lish disconsolately. 

“No one but me,” murmured Mrs. 
Powell, with an accent of mild depreca- 
tion. 

“ But where is my wife, ma’am ?” 

He said those two small words, “ my 
wife,” with such a tone of resolute defi- 
ance, that Mrs. Powell looked up at him 
as he spoke, and thought, “He has seen 
the certificate.” 

“ Where is Aurora ?” repeated John. 

“ I believe that Mrs. Hellish has 
gone out.” 

“ Gone out! where ?” 

“You forget, sir,” said the ensign’s 
widow reproachfully, — “ you appear to 
forget your special request that I should 
abstain from all supervision of Mrs. 
Hellish’s arrangements. Prior to that 
request, which I may venture to suggest 
was unnecessarily emphatic, I had cer- 
tainly considered myself, as the humble 
individual chosen by Miss Floyd’s aunt, 
and invested by her with a species of 


FLOYD. 203 

authority over the young lady’s actions, 
in some manner responsible for — ” 

John Hellish chafed horribly under 
the merciless stream of long words 
which Mrs. Powell poured upon his 
head. 

“ Talk about that another time, for 
heaven’s sake, ma’am,” he said impa- 
tiently. “ I only want to know where 
my wife is. Two words will tell me 
that, I suppose.” 

“ I am sorry to say that I am unable 
to afford you any information upon that 
subject,” answered Mrs. Powell ; “Mrs. 
Hellish quitted the house at about half- 
past three o’clock, dressed for walking. 
1 have not seen her since.” 

Heaven forgive Aurora for the trouble 
it had been her lot to bring upon those 
who best loved her. John’s heart grew 
sick with terror at this first failure of 
his hope. He had pictured her waiting 
to receive him, ready to fall upon his 
breast in answer to his passionate cry, 
“Aurora, come! come, dear love! the 
secret has been discovered, and is for- 
given.” 

“ Somebody knows where my wife has 
gone, I suppose, Mrs. Powell ?” he said 
fiercely, turning upon the ensign’s widow 
in his wrathful sense of disappointment 
and alarm. He was only a big child, 
after all, with a child’s alternate hope- 
fulness and despair; with a child’s pas- 
sionate devotion for those he loved, and 
ignorant terror of danger to those be- 
loved ones. 

“Mrs. Hellish may have made a con- 
fidante of Parsons,” replied the ensign’s 
widow; “but she certainly did not 
enlighten me as to her intended move- 
ments. Shall I ring the bell for Par- 
sons?” 

“ If you please.” 

John Hellish stood upon the thresh- 
old of the French window, not caring to 
enter the handsome chamber of which 
he was the master. Why should he go 
into the house ? It was no home for 
him without the woman who had made 
it so dear and sacred ; dear even in the 
darkest hour of sorrow and, anxiety, 
sacred even in despite of the trouble his 
love had brought upon him. 

The maid Parsons appeared in answer 
to a message sent by Mrs. Powell ; and 
John strode into the room and interro- 


204 


AURORA FLOYD. 


gated her sharply as to the departure 
of her mistress. 

The girl could tell very little, except 
that Mrs. Mellish had said that she was 
going into the gardens, and that she 
had left a letter in the study for the 
master of the house. Perhaps Mrs. 
Powell was even better aware of the 
exktence of this letter than the Abigail 
herself. She had crept stealthily into 
John’s room after her interview with 
the Softy and her chance encounter of 
Aurora. She had found the letter lying 
on the table, sealed with a crest and 
monogram that were engraved upon a 
blood-stone worn by Mrs. Mellish 
amongst the trinkets on her watch- 
chain. It was not possible, therefore, 
to manipulate this letter with any safety, 
and Mrs. Powell had contented herself 
by guessing darkly at its contents. 
The Softy had told her of the fatal dis-' 
covery of the morning, and she instinc- 
tively comprehended the meaning of 
that sealed letter. It was a letter of 
explanation and farewell, perhaps ; per- 
haps only of farewell. 

John strode along the corridor that 
led to his favorite room. The chamber 
was dimly lighted by the yellow evening 
sunlight which streamed from between 
the Yenetian blinds, and drew golden 
bars upon the matted floor. But even 
in that dusky and uncertain light he 
saw the white patch upon the table, and 
sprang with tigerish haste upon the 
letter his wife had left for him. 

He drew up the Venetian blind, and 
stood in the embrasure of the window, 
with the evening sunlight upon his face, 
reading Aurora’s letter. There was 
neither anger nor alarm visible in his 
face as he read ; only supreme love and 
supreme compassion. 

“My poor darling! my poor girl! 
How could she think that there could 
ever be such a word as good-by between 
us ! Does she think so lightly of my 
love as to believe that it could fail her 
now, when she wants it most ? Why, 
if that man had lived,” he thought, his 
face darkening with the memory of that 
unburied clay which yet lay in the still 
chamber at the north lodge, — “if that 
man had lived, and had claimed her, and 
carried her from me by the right of the 
paper in my breast, I would have clung 


to her still ; I would have followed 
wherever he went, and would have lived 
near him, that she might have known 
where to look for a defender from every 
wrong ; I would have been his servant, 
the willing servant and contented hanger- 
on of a boor, if I could have served her 
by enduring his insolence. So, my 
dear, my dear,” murmured the young 
squire, with a tender smile, “it was 
worse than foolish to write this letter to 
me, and even more useless than it was 
cruel to run away from the man who 
would follow you to the farthest end 
of this wide world.” 

He put the letter into his pocket, and 
took his hat from the table. He was 
ready to start — he scarcely knew for 
what destination; for the end of the 
world, perhaps — in his search for the 
woman he loved. But he was going to 
Felden Woods before beginning the 
longer journey, as he fully believed that 
Aurora would fly to her father in her 
foolish terror. 

“ To think that any thing could ever 
happen to change or lessen my love for 
her,” he said ; “ foolish girl 1 foolish girl !” 

He rang for his servant, and ordered 
the hasty packing of his smallest port- 
manteau. He was going to town for a 
day or two, and he was going alone. 
He looked at his watch ; it was only a 
quarter after eight, and the mail left 
Doncaster at half-past twelve. There 
was plenty of time, therefore ; a great 
deal too much time for the feverish im- 
patience of Mr. Mellish, who would 
have chartered a special engine to con- 
vey him, had the railway officials been 
willing. There were four long hours 
during which he must wait, wearing out 
his heart in his anxiety to follow the 
woman he loved, to take her to his 
breast and comfort and shelter her, to 
tell her that true love knows neither 
decrease nor change. He ordered the 
dog-cart to be got ready for him at 
eleven o’clock. There was'a slow train 
that left Doncaster at ten ; but as it 
reached London only ten minutes before 
the mail, it was scarcely desirable as a 
conveyance. Yet after the hour had 
passed for its starting Mr. Mellish re- 
proached himself bitterly for that lost 
ten minutes, and was tormented by a 
fancy that, through the loss of those 


AURORA FLOYD. 


205 


very ten minutes, he should miss the 
chance of an immediate meeting with 
Aurora. v 

It was nine o’clock before he remem- 
bered the necessity of making some pre- 
t 9 nce of sitting down to dinner. He 
took his place at the end of the long 
table, and sent for Mrs. Powell, who 
appeared in answer to his summons, and 
seated herself with a well-bred affecta- 
tion pf not knowing that the dinner had 
been put off for an hour and a half. 

“ I’m sorry I’ve* kept you so long, 
Mrs. Powell,” he said, as he sent the 
ensign’s widow a ladleful of clear soup, 
that was of the temperature of lemon- 
ade. “ The truth is, that I — I — find I 
shall be compelled to run up to town by 
the mail.” 

“Upon no unpleasant business, I 
hope ?” 

“Oh, dear no, not at all. Mrs. Mel- 
lish has gone up to her father’s place, 
and — and — has requested me to follow 
her,” added John, telling a lie with con- 
siderable awkwardness, but with no very 
great remorse. He did not speak again 
during dinner. He ate any thing that 
his servants put before him, and took 
a good deal of wine ; but he ate and 
drank alike unconsciously, and when the 
cloth had been removed, and he was left 
alone with Mrs. Powell, he sat staring 
at the reflection of the wax-candles in 
the depths bf the mahogany. It was 
only when the lady gave a little ceremo- 
nial cough, and rose with the intention 
of simpering out of the room, that he 
roused himself from his long reverie, 
and looked up suddenly. 

“ Don’t go just this moment, if you 
please, Mrs. Powell,” he said. “If 
you’ll sit down again for a few minutes, 
I shall be glad. I wished to say a word 
or two to you before I leave Mellish.” 

He rose as he spoke, and pointed to 
a chair. Mrs. Powell seated herself, 
and looked at him earnestly ; with an 
eager, vi perish earnestness, and a ner- 
vous movement of her thin lips. 

“ When you came here, Mrs. Powell,” 
.said John gravely, “you came as my 
wife’s guest, and as my wife’s friend. I 
need scarcely say that you could have 
had no better claim upon my friendship 
and hospitality. If you had brought a 
regiment of dragoons with you as the 
condition of your visit, they would have 


been welcome ; for I believed that your 
coming would give pleasure to my poor 
girl. If my wife had been indebted to 
you for any word of kindness, for any 
look of affection, I would have repaid 
that debt a thousand-fold, had it lain in 
my power to do so by any service, how- 
ever difficult. You would have lost 
nothing by your love for my poor mo- 
therless girl, if any devotion of mine 
could have recompensed you for that 
tenderness. It was 6nly reasonable that 
I should look to you as the natural friend 
and counsellor of my darling ; and I did 
so, honestly and confidently. Forgive 
me if I tell you that I very soon discov- 
ered how much I had been mistaken in 
entertaining such a hope. I soon saw 
that you were no friend to my wife.” 

“ Mr. Mellish !” 

“Oh, my dear madam, you think be- 
'cause I keep hunting-boots and guns in 
the room I call my study, and because 
I remember no more of the Latin that 
my tutor crammed into my head than 
the first line of the Eton Syntax, — you 
think, because I’m not clever, that I 
must needs be a fool. That’s your 
mistake, Mrs. Powell ; I’m not clever 
enough to be a fool, and I’ve just suffi- 
cient perception to see any danger that 
assails those I love. You don’t like my 
wife ; you grudge her her youth and her 
beauty, and my foolish love for her; and 
you’ve watched, and listened, and plot- 
ted — in a lady-like way, of course-^to 
do her some evil. Forgive me if I speak 
plainly. Where Aurora is concerned, I 
feel very strongly. To hurt her little 
finger is to torture my whole body. To 
stab her once is to stab me a hundred 
times. I have no wish to be discour- 
teous to a lady ; I am only sorry that 
you have been unable to love a poor 
girl who has rarely failed to win friends 
amongst those who have known her. 
Let us part without animosity, but let 
us understand each other for the first 
time. You do not like us, and it is 
better that we should part before you 
learn to hate us.” 

The ensign’s widow waited in utter 
stupefaction until Mr. Mellish stopped, 
from want of breath, perhaps, rather 
than from want of words. 

All her viperish nature rose in white 
defiance of him as he walked up and 
down the room, chafing himself into a 


AURORA FLOYD. 


206 

fury with his recollection of the wrong 
she had done him in not loving his wife. 

*‘You are perhaps aware, Mr. Mel- 
lish,’’ she said, after an awful pause, 
“ that under such circumstances the 
annual stipend due to me for my ser- 
vices cannot be expected to cease at 
your caprice; and that, although you 
may turn me out of doors” — Mrs. Powell 
descended to this very commonplace lo- 
cution, and stooped to the vernacular in 
her desire to be spiteful — “you must 
understand that you will be liable for 
my salary until the expiration of — ” 

“ Oh, pray do not imagine that I 
shall repudiate any claim you may make 
upon me, Mrs. Powell,” said John 
eagerly ; “ Heaven knows it has been 
no pleasure to me to speak as plainly as 
I have spoken to-night. I will write a 
cheque for any amount you may con- 
sider proper as compensation for this 
change in our arrangements. I might 
have been more polite, perhaps ; I 
might have told you that my wife and I 
think of travelling on the Continent, 
and that we are, therefore, breaking up 
onr household. I have preferred tell- 
ing you the plain truth. Forgive me 
if I have wounded you.” 

Mrs. Powell rose, pale, menacing, ter- 
rible ; terrible in the intensity of her 
feeble wrath, and in the consciousness 
that she had power to stab the heart of 
the man who had affronted her. 

“You have merely anticipated my 
own intention, Mr. Mellish,” she said. 
“ I could not possibly have remained a 
member of your household after the very 
unpleasant circumstances that have late- 
ly transpired. My worst wish is, that 
you may find yourself involved in no 
greater trouble through your connection 
with Mr. Floyd’s daughter. Let me 
add one word of warning before I have 
the honor of wishing you good evening. 
Malicious people might be tempted to 
smile at your enthusiastic mention of 
your ‘ wife remembering that the. per- 
son to whom you allude is Aurora Con- 
yers, the widow of your groom, and 
that she has never possessed any legal 
claim to the title you bestow upon her.” 

If Mrs. Powell had been a man, she 
W'ould have found her head in contact 
with the Turkey carpet of John’s dining- 
room before she could have concluded 
this speech ; as she was a woman, John 


Mellish stood looking her full in the 
face, waiting till she had finished speak- 
ing. But he bore the stab she inflicted 
without flinching under its cruel pain, 
and he robbed her of the gratification 
she had hoped for. He did not let her 
see his anguish. 

“ If Lofthouse has told her the se- 
cret,” he cried, when the door had closed 
upon Mrs. Powell, “I’ll horsewhip him 
in the church.” 


CHAPTER XXX. 

AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR. 

Aurora found a civil railway official 
at the Doncaster station, who was ready 
to take a ticket for her, and find her a 
comfortable seat in an empty carriage ; 
but before the train started, a couple of 
sturdy farmers took their seats upon the 
spring cushions opposite Mrs. Mellish. 
They were wealthy gentlemen, who 
farmed their own land, and travelled 
express ; but they brought a’ powerful 
odor of the stable-yard into the car- 
riage, and they talked with that honest 
northern twang which always has a 
friendly sound to the writer of this 
story. Aurora, with her veil drawn 
over her pale face, attracted very little 
of their attention. They talked of 
farming-stock and horse-racing, and 
looked out of the window every now 
and then to shrug their shoulders at 
somebody else’s agriculture. 

I believe they were acquainted with 
the capabilities of every acre of land 
between Doncaster and Harrow, and 
knew how it might have been made 
“worth ten shillin’ an acre more than it 
was, too, sir,” as they perpetually in- 
formed each other. 

How wearisome their talk must have 
seemed to the poor lonely creature who 
was running away from the man she 
loved — from the man who loved her, 
and would love her to the end of time. 

“ I didn’t mean what I wrote,” she 
thought. “ My poor boy would never 
love me less. His great heart is made 
up of unselfish love and generous devo- 
tion. But he would be so sorry for me; 
he would be so sorry 1 He could never 


AURORA FLOYD. 


be proud of me again ; he could never 
boast of me any more. He would be 
always resenting some insult, or imagin- 
ing some slight. It would be too pain- 
ful for’ him. lie would see his wife 
pointed at as the woman who had mar- 
ried her groom. He would be embroil- 
ed in a hundred quarrels, a hundred 
miseries. I will make the only return 
that I can ever make to him for his 
goodness to me : I will give him up, 
and go away and hide myself from him 
for ever.” 

She tried to imagine what John’s life 
would be without her. She tried to 
think of him in some future time, when 
he should have worn out his grief, and 
reconciled himself to her loss. But she 
could not, she could not! She could 
not endure any image of him in which 
he was separated from his love for her. 

“How should I ever think of him 
without thinking of his love for me ?” 
she thought. “ He loved me from the 
first moment in which he saw me. I 
have never known him except as a lover ; 
generous, pure, and true.” 

And in this mind Aurora watched 
the smaller stations, which looked like 
mere streaks of whitened woodwork as 
the express tore past them ; though 
every one of them was a milestone upon 
the long road which was separating her 
from thp man she loved. 

Ah, careless wives, who think it a 
small thing, perhaps, that your husbands 
are honest and generous, 'constant and 
true, and who are apt to grumble be- 
cause your next-door neighbors have 
started a carriage, while you are fain to 
be content with eighteen penny airings 
in vehicles procured at the nearest cab- 
stand — stop and think of this wretched 
girl, who in this' hour of desolation re- 
called a thousand little wrongs she had 
done to her husband, and would have 
laid herself under his feet to be walked 
over by him could she have thus atoned 
for her petty tyrannies, her pretty ca- 
prices. Think of her in her loneliness, 
with her heart yearning to go back to 
the man she loved, and with her love 
arrayed against herself and pleading for 
him. She changed her mind a hundred 
times during that four hours’ journey ; 
sometimes thinking that she would go 
back by the next train, and then again 
remembering that her first impulse had 


207 

been, perhaps, after all, only too correct, 
and that John Mellislrs heart had turned 
against her in the cruel humiliation of 
that morning’s discovery. 

Have you ever tried to imagine the 
anger of a person whom you have never, 
seen angry? Have you ever called up 
the image of a face that has never looked 
on you except in love and gentleness, 
and invested that familiar countenance 
with the blank sternness of estrange- 
ment? Aurora did this.^ She acted 
over and over again in her weary brain 
the scene that might have taken place 
between her husband and herself. She 
remembered that scene in the hackneyed 
stage-play, which every body affects to 
ridicule and secretly weeps at. She re- 
membered Mrs. Haller and the Stranger, 
the children, the Countess, the cottage, 
the jewels, the parchments, and all the 
old familiar properties of that well- 
known fifth act in the simple, social 
tragedy ; and she pictured to herself 
John-Mellish retiring into some distant 
country with his rheumatic trainer Lang- 
ley, and becoming a misanthropical her- 
mit, after the manner of the injured 
German. 

What was her life to be henceforth ? 
She shut her eyes upon that blank future. 

“ I will go back to my father,” she 
thought ; “ I will go back to him again, 
as I went before. But this time there 
shall be no falsehoods, no equivocations; 
and this time nothing shall tempt me to 
leave him again.” 

Amid all her perplexities, she clung 
to the thought that Lucy and Talbot 
would help her. She would appeal to 
passionless Talbot Bulstrode in behalf of 
her poor heart-broken John. 

“ Talbot will tell me what is right and 
honorable to be done,” she thought, 

“ I will hold by what he says. He shall 
be the arbiter of my future.” 

I do not believe that Aurora had ever 
entertained any very passionate devotion 
for the handsome Cornishman ; but it is 
very certain that she had always re- 
spected him. It may be that any love 
she had felt for him had grown out of 
that very respect, and that her reverence 
for his character was made all the greater 
by the contrast between him and the 
base-born schemer for whom her youth 
had been sacrificed. She had submitted 
to the decree which had separated her 


208 


AURORA FLOYD. 


from her affianced lover, for she had be- 
lieved in its justice; and she was ready 
now to submit to any decision pronounced 
by the man, in whose sense of honor she 
had unbounded confidence. 

She thought of all these things again 
and again and again, while the farmers 
talked of sheep and turnips, of Tliorley’s 
food, swedes, and beans, and corn, and 
clover, and of mysterious diseases, which 
they discussed gravely, under such terms 
as “red gum,” “finger and toe,” &c. 
They alternated this talk with a dash of 
turf scandal ; and even in the all-absorb- 
ing perplexities of her domestic sorrows, 
Mrs. Mellish could have turned fiercely 
upon these innocent farmers when they 
pooh-poohed John’s stable, and made 
light of the reputation of her namesake 
the bay filly, and declared that no horse 
that came out of the squire’s stables was 
ever any thing better than a plater or a 
screw. 

The journey came to an end, only too 
quickly it seemed to Aurora. Too quickly, 
for every mile widened the gulf she had 
set between herself and the home she 
loved ; every moment only brought .the 
realization of her loss more fully home 
to her mind. 

“ I will abide by Talbot Bulstrode’s 
advice,” she kept saying to herself ; in- 
deed this thought was the only reed to 
which she clung in her trouble. She was 
not a strong-minded woman. She had 
the generous, impulsive nature which 
naturally turns to others for help and 
comfort. Secretiveness had no part in 
her organization, and the one conceal- 
ment of her life had been a perpetual 
pain and grief to her. 

It was past eight o’clock when she 
found herself alone amidst the bustle and 
confusion of the King’s Cross terminus. 
She sent a porter for a cab, and ordered 
the man to drive to Half-Moon street. 
It was only a few days since she had met 
Lucy and Talbot at Felden Woods, and 
she knew that Mr. Bulstrode and his 
wife were detained in town, waiting for 
the prorogation of the House. 

It was Saturday evening, and there- 
fore a holiday for the young advocate 
of the Cornish miners and their rights ; 
but Talbot spent his leisure amongst 
Blue-books and Parliamentary Minutes, 
and poor Lucy, who might have been 
shining, a pale star, at some crowded 


conversaziorie, was compelled to forego 
the pleasure of struggling ^ upon the 
staircase of one of those wise individuals 
who insist upon inviting their acquaint- 
ances to pack themselves into the small- 
est given space consistent with the pre- 
servation of life, and trample upon each 
other’s lace flounces and varnished boots 
with smiling equanimity. Perhaps, in 
the universal fitness of things, even these 
fashionable evenings have a certain sol- 
emn purpose, deeply hidden under con- 
siderable surface-frivolity. It may be 
that they serve as moral gymnasia, in 
which the thews and sinews of social 
amenity are racked and tortured, with a 
view to their increased power of endur- 
ance. It is good for a man to have his 
favorite corn trodden upon, and yet be 
compelled to smile under the torture; 
and a woman may learn her first great 
lesson in fortitude from the destruction 
of fifty guineas’ worth of Mechlin, and 
the necessity of assuring the destroyer 
that she is rather gratified than other- 
wise by the sacrifice. Noblesse oblige. 
It is good to “suffer and be strong.” 
Cold coffee and tepid icecream may not 
be the most strengthening or delightful 
of food ; but there may be a moral diet 
provided at these social gatherings which 
is not without its usefulness. 

Lucy willingly abandoned her own 
delights ; for she had that lady-like ap- 
preciation of society which had been a 
part of her education. Her placid nature 
knew no abnormal tendencies. She liked 
the amusements that other girls of her 
position liked. She had none of the 
eccentric predilections which had been 
so fatal to her cousin. She was not like 
that lovely and illustrious Spanish lady 
who is said to love the cirque better than 
the opera, and to have a more intense 
appreciation of a series of flying plunges 
through tissue-paper-covered hoops than 
of the most elaborate of tenor 

or soprano. She gave up something, 
therefore, in resigning the stereotyped 
gaieties of the London season. But, 
Heaven knows, it was very pleasant to 
her to make the sacrifice. Her inclina- 
tions were fatted lambs, which she offered 
willingly upon the altar of her idol. She 
was never happier than when sitting by 
her husband’s side, making extracts from 
the Blue-books to be quoted in some 
pamphlet that be was writing ; or if she 


AURORA FLOYD. 


was ever happier, it was only when she 
sat ill the ladies’ gallery, straining her 
eyes athwart the floriated iron fretwork, 
which screened her from any wandering 
glances of distracted members, in her 
vain efforts to see her husband in his 
place on the Government benches, and 
very rarely seeing more than the crown 
of Mr. Bulstrode’s hat. 

She sat by Talbot’s side upon this 
evening, busy with some pretty needle- 
work, and listening with patient atten- 
tion to her husband’s perusal of the 
proof-sheets of his last pamphlet. It 
was a noble specimen of the stately 
and ponderous style of writing, and it 
abounded in crushing arguments and 
magnificent climaxes, which utterly an- 
nihilated somebody (Lucy didn’t exactly 
make out who), and most incontroverti- 
bly established something, though Mrs. 
Bulstrode couldn’t quite understand 
what. It was enough for her that he 
liad written that wonderful composition, 
and that it was his rich baritone voice 
that rolled out the studied Johnsonian- 
isms. If he had pleased to read Greek 
to her, she would have thought it plea- 
sant to listen. Indeed there were pet 
passages of Homer which Mr. Bulstrode 
now and then loved to recite to his wife, 
and which the little hypocrite pretended 
to admire. No cloud had darkened the 
calm heaven of Lucy’s married life. 
She loved, and was beloved. It was a 
part of her nature to love in a reveren- 
tial attitude, and she had no wish to 
approach nearer to her idol. To sit at 
her Sultan’s feet and replenish the rose- 
water in his chibouque ; to watch him 
while he slept, and wave the piZnkah 
above his seraphic head ; to love and 
admire aiiid pray for him — made up the 
sum of her heart’s desire. 

It was close upon nine o’clock, when 
Mr. Bulstrode was interrupted in the 
very crowning sentence of his perora- 
tion by a double knock at the street- 
door. The houses in Half-Moon Street 
are small, and Talbot flung down his 
proof-sheet with a gesture expressive of 
considerable irritation. Lucy looked 
up, half-sympathisingly, half apologetic- 
ally, at her lord and master. She held 
herself in a manner responsible for his 
ease and comfort. 

“ Who can it be, dear ?” she mur- 
mured ; '' at such a time, too I” 

13 


209 

“ Some annoyance or other, I dare 
say, my dear,” answered Talbot. “But 
whoever it is, I won’t see them to-night. 
I suppose, Lucy, I’ve given you a pretty 
fair idea of the effect of this upon my 
honorable friend the member for — ” 

Before Mr. Bulstrode could name the 
borough of which his honourable friend 
was the representative, a servant an- 
nounced that Mrs. Mellish was waiting 
below to see the master of the house. 

“ Aurora !” exclaimed Lucy, starting 
from her seat and dropping the fairy 
implements of her work in a little shower 
upon the carpet; “Auroral It can’t 
be, surely ? Why, Talbot, she only 
went back to Yorkshire a few days 
ago.” 

“ Mr. and Mrs. Mellish are both be- 
low, I suppose ?” Mr. Bulstrode said to 
the servant. 

“No, sir; Mrs. Mellish came alone 
in a cab from the station, I believe. 
Mrs. Mellish is in the library, sir. I 
asked her to walk up-stairs ; but she 
requested to see you alone, sir, if you 
please.” 

“I’ll come directly,” answered Talbot. 
“ Tell Mrs. Mellish I will be with her 
immediately.” 

The door closed upon the servant, 
and Lucy ran towards it, eager to hurry 
to her cousin. 

“Poor Aurora,” she said, “ there must 
be something wrong, surely. Uncle 
Archibald has been taken ill, perhaps ; 
he was not looking well when we left 
Felden. I’ll go to her, Talbot ; I’m 
sure she’d like to see me first.” 

“ No, Lucy ; no,” answered Mr. Bul- 
strode, laying his hand upon the door, 
and standing between it and his wife; 
“ I had rather you didn’t see your cousin 
until I have se^n her. It will be better 
for me to see her first.” His face was 
very grave, and his manner almost stern 
as he said this. Lucy shrank from him 
as if he had wounded her. She under- 
stood him, very vaguely, it is true ; but 
she understood that he had some doubt 
or suspicion of her cousin, and for the 
first time in his life Mr. Bulstrode saw 
an angry light kindled in his wife’s blue 
eyes. 

“ Why should you prevent my seeing 
Aurora ?” Lucy asked ; “ she is the best 
and dearest girl in the world. Why 
shouldn’t I see her 


210 


AUROKA FLOYD. 


Talbot Bulstrode stared in blank 
amazement at his mutinous wife. 

“Be reasonable, my dear Lucy,” he 
answered very mildly ; “ I hope always 
to be able to respect your cousin — as 
much as I respect you. But if Mrs. 
Mellish leaves her husband in York- 
shire, and comes to London without his 
permission — for he would never permit 
her to come alone — she must explain to 
me why she does so before I can suffer 
my wife to receive her.” 

Poor Lucy’-s fair head drooped under 
this reproof. 

She remembered her last conversation 
with her cousin ; that conversation in 
which Aurora had spoken of some far- 
off day of trouble, that might bring her 
to ask for comfort and shelter in Half- 
Moon Street. Had the day of trouble 
come already ? 

“Was it wrong of Aurora to come 
alone, Talbot dear?” Luey asked meekly. 

“Was it wrong?” repeated Mr. Bul- 
strode fiercely. “Would it be wrong 
for you to go tearing from here to Coru- 
wali, child ?” 

He was irritated by the mere imagina- 
tion of such an outrage, and he looked 
at Lucy as if he half .suspected her of 
some such intention. 

“But Aurora may have had some 
very particular reason, dear?” pleaded 
his wife. 

“ I cannot imagine any reason power- 
ful enough to justify such a proceeding,” 
answered Talbot ; “ but I shall be better 
able to judge of that when I’ve heard 
what Mrs. Mellish has to say. Stay 
here, Lucy, till I send for you.” 

“Yes, Talbot.” 

She obeyed as submissively as a 
child ; but she lingered near the door 
after her husband had closed it upon 
her, with a mournful yearning in her 
heart. She wanted to go to her cousin, 
and comfort her, if she had need of com- 
fort. She dreaded the effect of her 
husband’s cold and passionless manner 
upon Aurora’s impressionable nature. 

Mr. Bulstrode went down to the li- 
brary to receive his kinswoman. It 
would have been strange if he had failed 
to remember ’ that Christmas evening 
nearly two years before, upon which he 
had gone down to the shadowy room at 
Felden, with every hope of his heart 
crushed, to ask for comfort from the 


woman he loved. It would have been 
strange if, in the brief interval that 
elapsed between his leaving the drawing- 
room and entering the library, his mind 
had not flown back to that day of deso- 
tion. If there was an infidelity to Lucy 
in that sharp thrill of pain that pierced 
his heart as the old memory came back, 
the sin was as short-lived as the agony 
which it brought with it. He was able 
now to say, in all singleness of heart, 
“I made a wise choice, and I shall never 
repent of having made it.” 

The library was a small apartment at 
the back of the dining-room. It was 
dimly lighted, for Aurora had lowered 
the lamp. She did not want Mr. Bul- 
strode to see her face. 

“ My dear Mrs. Mellish,” said Talbot 
gravely, “ I am so surprised at this 
visit, that I scarcely know how to say I 
am glad to see you. I fear something 
must have happened to cause your tra- 
velling alone. John is ill, perhaps, 
or — ” 

He might have said much more if 
Aurora had not interrupted him by cast- 
ing herself upon her knees before him, 
and looking up at him with a pale, ago- 
nized face, that seemed almost ghastly 
in the dim lamp-light. 

It was impossible to describe the look 
of horror that came over Talbot Bul- 
strode’s face as she did this. It was the 
Felden scene over again. He came to 
her in the hope that she would justify 
herself, and she tacitly acknowledged 
her humiliation. 

She was a guilty woman, then ; a 
guilty creature, whom it would be his 
painful duty to cast out of that pure 
household. She was a poor, lost, pol- 
luted wretch, who must not be* admitted 
into the holy atmosphere of a Christian 
gentleman’s home. 

“ Mrs. Mellish ! Mrs. Mellish I” he 
cried, “ what is the meaning of this ? 
Why do you give me this horrible pain 
again? Why do you insist upon hu- 
miliating yourself and me by such a 
scene as this ?” 

“Oh, Talbot, Talbot I” answered Au- 
rora, “I come to you because you are 
good and honorable. . I am a desolate, 
wretched woman, and I want your help 
—I want your advice. I will abide by 
it ; I will, Talbot Bulstrode ; so help 
me, Heaven.” 


AURORA FLOYD. 


211 


Her voice was broken by her sobs. 
In her passionate grief and confusion 
she forgot that it was just possible such 
an appeal as this might be rather be- 
wildering in its effect upon Talbot. But 
perhaps, even amid his bewilderment, 
the young Cornishman saw, or fancied 
he saw, something in Aurora’s manner 
which had no fellowship with guilt ; or 
with such guilt as he had at first dreaded. 
I imagine that it must have been so ; 
for his voice was softer and his manner 
kinder when he next addressed her. 

“ Aurora,” he said, “ for pity’s sake, 
be calm. Why have you left Hellish ? 
What is the business in which 1 can 
help or advise you ? Be calm, my dear 
girl, and I will try and understand you. 
God knows how much I wish to be a 
friend to you, for I stand in a brother’s 
place, you know, my dear, and demand 
a brother’s right to question your ac- 
tions. I am sorry you came up to town 
alone, because such a step was calcu- 
lated to compromise you ; but if you 
will be calm and tell me why you came, 
I may be able to understand your mo- 
tives. Come, Aurora, try and be calm.” 

She was still on her knees, sobbing 
hysterically. Talbot would have sum- 
moned his wife to her assistance, but he 
could not bear to see the two women 
associated until he had discovered the 
cause of Aurora’s agitation. 

He poured some water into a glass, 
and gave it her. He placed her in an 
easy-chair near the open window, and 
then walked up and down the room 
until she had recovered herself. 

“ Talbot Bulstrode,” she said quietly, 
after a long pause, “I want you to help 
me in the crisis of my life. I must be 
candid with you, therefore, and tell you 
that which I would have died rather 
than tell you two years ago. You re- 
member the night upon which you left 
Felden ?” 

“ Remember it ? Yes, yes.” 

“ The secret which separated us then, 
Talbot, was the one secret of my life — 
the secret of my disobedience, the secret 
of ray father’s sorrow. You asked me 
to give you an account of that one year 
which was missing out of the history of 
my life. I could not do so, Talbot; 
I would not! My pride revolted against 
the horrible humiliation. If you had 
discovered the secret yourself, and had 


accused me of the disgraceful truth, I 
would have attempted no denial ; but 
with my own lips to utter the hateful 
story — no, no, I could have borne any 
thing better than that. But now that 
my secret is common property, in the 
keeping of police- ofiScers and stable- 
boys, I can afford to tell you all. When 
I left the school in the Rue Saint-Domi- 
nique, I ran away to marry my father’s 
groom !” 

“Aurora I” 

Talbot Bulstrode dropped into the 
chair nearest him, and sat blankly star- 
ing at his wife’s cousin. Was this the 
secret humiliation which had prostrated 
her at his feet in the chamber at Felden 
Woods ? 

“ Oh, Talbot, how could I have told 
you this ? How can I tell you now why 
I did this mad and wicked thing, blight- 
ing the happiness of my youth by my 
own act, and bringing shame and grief 
upon my father ? I had no romantic, 
overwhelming love for this man. I can- 
not plead the excuses which some women 
urge for their madness. I had only a 
schoolgirl’s sentimental fancy for his 
dashing manner, only a schoolgirl’s 
frivolous admiration of his handsome 
face. I married him because he had 
dark-blue eyes, and long eyelashes, and 
white teeth, and brown hair. He had 
insinuated himself into a kind of inti- 
macy with me, by bringing me all the 
empty gossip of the race-course, by ex- 
tra attention to my favorite horses, by 
rearing a litter of puppies for me. All 
these things brought about association 
between us ; he was always my compan- 
ion in my rides ; and he contrived, before 
long, to tell me his story. Bah, why 
should I weary you with it ?” cried Au- 
rora scornfully. “ He was a prince in 
disguise, of course ; he was a gentle- 
man’s son ; his father had kept his hunt- 
ers ; he was at war with fortune ; he had 
been ill-used and trampled down in the 
battle of life. His talk was something 
to this effect, and I believed him. Why 
should I disbelieve him ? I had lived 
all my life in an atmosphere of truth. 
My governess and I talked perpetually 
of the groom’s romantic story. She was 
a silly woman, and encouraged my folly ; 
out of mere stupidity, I believe, and 
with no suspicion of the mischief she 
was doing. We criticised the groom’s 


212 


AURORA FLOTD. 


handsome face, his white hands, his aris- 
tocratic manners. I mistook insolence 
for aristocracy ; Heaven help me I And 
as we saw scarcely any society at that 
time, I compared my father’s groom 
with the few guests who came to Fel- 
den ; and the town-bred impostor profited 
by comparison with rustic gentlemen. 
Why should I stay to account to you for 
my folly, Talbot Bulstrode ? I could 
never succeed in doing so, though I 
talked for a week; I cannot account to 
myself for my madness. I can only 
look back to that horrible time, and 
wonder why I was mad.” 

“ My poor Aurora I my poor Auroral” 

He spoke in the pitying tone with 
which he might have comforted her had 
she been a child. He was thinking of 
her in her childish ignorance, exposed 
to the insidious advances of an unscru- 
pulous schemer, and his heart bled for 
the motherless girl. 

“ My father found some letters written 
by this man, and discovered that his 
daughter had affianced herself to his 
groom. He made this discovery while 
I was out riding with James Conyers, — 
the groom’s name was Conyers — and 
when I came home there was a fearful 
scene between us. I was mad enough 
and wicked enough to defend my con- 
duct, and to reproach my father with 
the illiberality of his sentiments. I went 
even farther; I reminded him that the 
house of Floyd and Floyd had had a 
very humble origin. He took me to Paris 
upon the following day. I thought my- 
self cruelly treated. I revolted against 
the ceremonial monotony of the pen- 
sion; I hated the studies, which were 
ten times mote difficult than any thing 
I had ever experienced with my govern- 
ess ; I suffered terribly from the con- 
ventual seclusion, for I had been used 
to perfect freedom amongst the country 
roads round Felden ; and amidst all 
this, the groom pursued me with letters 
and messages ;, for he had followed me 
to Paris, and spent his money recklessly 
in bribing the servants and hangers-on 
of the school. He was playing for a 
high stake, and he played so desperately 
that he won. ' I ran away from school, 
and married him at Dover, within eight 
or nine hours of my escape from the 
Rue Saint-Domiuique.” 


She buried her face in her hands, and 
was silent for some time. 

“ Heaven have pity upon my wretched 
ignorance I” she said at last; “ the illu- 
sion under which 1 had married this man 
ended in about a week. At the end of 
that time I discovered that I was the 
victim of a mercenary wretch, who meant 
to use me to the uttermost as a means 
of wringing money from my father. For 
some time I submitted, and my father 
paid, and paid dearly, for his daughter’s 
folly ; but he refused to see the man I 
had married, or to see me until I sepa- 
rated myself from that man. He offered 
the groom an income, on the condition 
of his going to Australia, and resigning 
all association with me for ever. But 
the man had a higher game to play. He 
wanted to bring about a reconciliation 
with my father ; and he thought that in 
due time that tender father’s resolution 
would have yielded to the force of his 
love. It was little better than a year 
after our marriage that I made a discov- 
ery that transformed me in one moment 
from a girl into a woman ; a revengeful 
woman, perhaps, Mr. Bulstrode. I dis- 
covered that I had been wronged, de- 
ceived, and outraged by a wretch who 
laughed at my ignorant confidence in 
him. I had learned to hate the man 
long before this occurred; I had learned 
to despise his shallow trickeries, his inso- 
lent pretensions ; but I do not think I felt 
his deeper infamy the less keenly for that. 
We were traveling in the south of France, 
my husband playing the great gentleman 
upon my father’s money, when this discov- 
ery was made by me — or not by me ; for 
it was forced upon me by a woman who 
knew my story and pitied me. Within 
half an hour of obtaining this knowledge, 
I acted upon it. I wrote to James 
Conyers, telling him I had discovered 
that which gave me the right to call 
upon the law to release me from him ; 
and if I refrained from doing so, it was 
for my father’s sake, and not for his. I 
told him that go long as he left me un- 
molested, and kept my secret, I would 
remit him'money from time to time. I 
told him that I left him to the associa- 
tions he had chosen for himself; and 
that my only prayer was, that God, in 
His mercy, might grant me complete 
forgetfulness of him. I left this letter 


AURORA FLOYD. 


for him with the concierge, and quitted 
the hotel in such a manner as to prevent 
his obtaining any trace of the way I had 
gone. I stopped in Paris for a few 
days, waiting for a reply to a letter I 
had written to my father, telling him that 
James Conyers was dead. Perhaps that 
was the worst sin of my life, Talbot. I 
deceived my father; but I believed that 
I was doing a wise and merciful thing 
in setting his mind at rest. He would 
have never been- happy so long as he had 
believed the man lived. You under- 
stand all now, Talbot,” she said mourn- 
fully. “You remember the morning at 
Brighton 

“Yes, yes; and the newspaper with 
the marked paragraph — the report of 
the jockey’s death.” 

“ That report was false, Talbot Bul- 
strode,” cried Aurora. “James Conyers 
was not killed.” 

Talbot’s face grew suddenly pale. He 
began to understand something of the 
nature of that trouble which had brought 
Aurora to him. 

“What, he. was still living, then ?” he 
said anxiously. 

“Yes ; until the night before last.” 

“But where — where has he been all 
this time ?” 

“ During the last ten days — at Hellish 
Park.” 

She told him the terrible story of the 
murder. The trainer’s death had not 
yet been reported in the London papers. 
She told him the dreadful story ; and 
then, looking up at him with an earnest, 
imploring face, as she might have done 
bad he been indeed her brother, she en- 
treated him to help and counsel her in 
this terrible hour of need. 

“ Teach me how to do what is best for 
my dear love,” she said. “ Don’t think 
of me or my happiness, Talbot; think 
only of him. I will make any sacrifice ; 
I will submit to any thing. I want to 
atone to my poor dear for all the misery 
I have brought upon him.” 

Talbot Bulstrode did^not make any 
reply to this earnest appeal. The admin- 
istrative powers of his mind were at 
work ; he was busy summing up facts 
and setting them before him, in order 
to grapple with them fairly ; and he had 
no attention to wmste upon sentiment 
or emotion. He was walking up and 
down the room, with his eyebrows knitted 


213 

sternly over his cold gray eyes, and his 
head bent. 

“ How many people know this secret, 
Aurora ?” he asked presently. 

“ I can’t tell you that ; but I fear it 
must be very generally known,” answered 
Mrs. Hellish, with a shuddering recol- 
lection of the Softy’s insolence. “ I 
heard of the discovery that had been 
made from a hanger-on of the stables, 
a man who hates me, — a man whom I 
— had a misunderstanding wdth.” 

“ Have you* any idea who it was that 
shot this Conyers ?” 

“No, not the least idea.” 

“You do not even guess at any one ?” 

“No.” 

Talbot took a few more turns up and 
down the small apartment, in evident 
trouble and perplexity of mind. He 
left the room presently, and called at 
the foot of the staircase : 

“ Lucy, my dear, come down to your 
cousin.” 

I’m afraid Mrs. Bulstrode must have 
been lurking somewhere about the out- 
side of the drawing-room door, for she 
flew down the stairs at the sound of the 
strong voice, and was by her husband’s 
side two or three, seconds after he had 
spoken. 

“0 Talbot,” she said, “how long you 
have been ! I thought you would never 
send for me. What has been the matter 
with my poor darling?” 

“Go in to her, and comfort her, my 
dear,” Mr. Bulstrode answered, gravely : 
“she has had enough trouble, heaven 
knows, poor girl. Don’t ask her any 
questions, Lucy ; but make her as com- 
fortable as you can, and give her the 
best room you can find for her. She 
will stay with us as long as she remains 
in town.” 

“Dear, dear Talbot,” murmured the 
young Cornishman’s grateful worshiper, 
“ how kind you are!” 

“Kind!” cried Mr. Bulstrode; “she 
has need of friends, Lucy ; and, God 
knows, I will act a brother’s part to- 
wards her, faithfully and bravely. Yes, 
bravely!” he added, raising his head 
with an almost defiant gesture as he 
slowly ascended the stairs. 

What was the dark cloud which he 
saw brooding so fatally over the far 
horizon ? He dared not think of what 
it was — he dared not even acknowledge 


AURORA FLOYD. 


214 

its presence ; but there was a sense of 
trouble and horror in his breast that 
told him the shadow was there. 

Lucy Bulstrode ran into the library, 
and flung herself upon her cousin’s 
breast, and wept with her. She did not 
ask the nature of the sorrow which had 
brought Aurora an unexpected and un- 
invited guest to that modest little dwell- 
ing-house. . She only knew that her 
cousin was in trouble, and that it was 
her happy privilege to offer her shelter 
aud consolation. She would have fought 
a sturdy battle in defence of this privi- 
lege ; but she adored her husband for 
the generosity which had granted it to 
her without a struggle. For the first 
time in her life, poor gentle Lucy took 
a new position with her cousin. It was 
her turn to protect Aurora^ it was her 
turn to display a pretty motherly tender- 
ness for the desolate creature whose 
aching head rested on her bosom. 

Tiie West-end clocks were striking 
three, in the dead middle of the night, 
when Mrs. Mellish fell into a feverish 
slumber, even in her sleep repeating 
again and again: “My poor John ! my 
])Oor dear love I what will become of 
him ! my own faithful darling I” 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

TALBOT BULSTRODE’S ADVICE. 

Talbot Bulstrode went out early 
upon the quiet Sunday morning after 
Aurora’s arrival, and walked down to the 
Telegraph Company’s Office at Charing 
Cross, whence he despatched a message 
to Mr. John Mellish. It was a very 
brief message, only telling Mr. Mellish 
to come to town without delay, and that 
he would find Aurora in Half-Moon 
Street. Mr. Bulstrode walked quietly 
homewards in the morning sunshine, 
after having performed this duty. Even 
the London streets were bright and 
dewy in that early sunlight, for it was 
only a little after seven o’clock, and the 
fresh morning breezes came sweeping 
over the housetops, bringing health and 
purity from Shooter’s Hill and High- 
gate, Streatham and Barnsbury, Rich- 
mond and Hampstead. The white morn- 


ing mists were slowly melting from the 
worn grass in the Green Park ; and weary 
creatures, who had had no better shelter 
than the quiet sky, were creeping away 
to find such wretched resting-places as 
they might, in that free city, in which to 
sit for an unreasonable time upon a 
doorstep, or to ask a rich citizen for the 
price of a loaf, is to commit an indictable 
offence. 

Surely it was impossible for any young 
legislator not quite worn out by a life- 
long struggle with the time which was 
never meant to be set right, — surely it 
was impossible for any fresh-hearted pros- 
perous young Liberal to walk through 
those quiet streets without thinking of 
these things. Talbot Bulstrode thought 
very earnestly and very mournfully. To 
what end were his labors, after all ? He 
was fighting for a handful of Cornish 
miners; doing battle with the rampant 
spirit of circumlocution for the sake of a 
few benighted wretches, buried in the 
darkness of a black abyss of ignorance a 
hundred times deeper and darker than 
the material obscurities in wdiich they 
labored. He was working his best and 
his hardest that these men might be 
taught, in some easy, unambitious, man- 
ner, the simplest elements of Christian 
love and Christian duty. He was work- 
ing for these poor far-away creatures, in 
their forgotten corner of the earth ; and 
here, around and about him, was ignor- 
ance more terrible, because, hand-in-hand 
with ignorance of all good, there was the 
fatal experience of all evil. The simple 
Cornish miner who uses his pickaxe in 
the region of his friend’s skull, when he 
wishes to enforce an argument, does so 
because he knows no other species of em- 
phasis. But in the London universities 
of crime, knavery and vice and violence 
and sin matriculate and graduate day by 
day ; to take their degrees in the felon’s 
dock or on the scaffold. IIow could he 
be otherwise than sorrowful, thinking of 
these things ? Were Sodom and Go- 
morrah w'orse than this city ; in which 
there were yet so many good and earnest 
men laboring patiently day by day, aud 
taking little rest ? Was the great ac- 
cumulation of evil so heavy that it rolled 
for ever back .upon these untiring Sisy- 
phuses? Or did they make some imper- 
ceptible advance towards the mountain- 
1 top, despite of all discouragement ? 


AURORA FLOYD. 


With tins weary question debating; 
itself ill his brain, Mr. Biilstrode walked 
along Piccadilly towards the comfortable 
bachelor’s quarters, whose most common- 
place attributes Lucy had turned to fa- 
vor and to prettiness; but at the door 
of the Gloucester Coffee-house Talbot 
paused to stare absently at a nervous- 
looking chestnut mare, who insisted upon 
going through several lively performan- 
ces upon her hind-legs, very much to the 
annoyance of an unshaven ostler, and 
not particularly to the advantage of a 
smart little dog-cart to which she was 
harnessed. 

“You needn’t pull her mouth to pieces, 
my man,” cried a voice from the door- 
way of the hotel; “use her gently, and 
she’ll soon quiet herself. Steady, my 
girl ; steady I” added the owner of this 
voice, walking to the dog-cart as he 
spoke. 

Talbot had good reason to stop short, 
for this gentleman was Mr. John Mellish, 
whose pale face, and loose, disordered 
hair betokened a sleepless night. 

He was going to spring into the dog- 
cart, when his old friend tapped him on 
the shoulder. 

“ This is rather a lucky accident, John ; 
for you’re the very person I want to 
see,” said Mr. Bulstrode. “ I’ve just tele- 
graphed to you.” 

John Mellish stared with a blank face. 

“Don’t hinder me, please,” he said; 
“I’ll talk to you by and by. I’ll call 
upon you in a day or two. I’m just off 
to Felden. I’ve only been in town an 
hour and a half, and should have gone 
down before, if I had not been afraid of 
knocking up the family.” 

He made another attempt to get into 
the vehicle, but Talbot caught him by 
the arm. 

“ You needn’t go to Felden,” he said; 
“your wife’s much nearer.” 

“ Eh ?” 


“ She’s at my house. Come and have 
some breakfast.” 

There was no shadow upon Talbot 
Bulstrode’s mind asliis old school-fellow 
caught him by the hand, and nearly dis- 
located his wrist in a paroxysm of joy 
and gratitude. It was impossible for 
him to look beyond that sudden burst 
of sunshine upon John’s face. If Mr. 
Mellish had been separated from his wife 
for ten years, and had just returned from 


i 


215 

the Antipodes for the sole purpose of 
seeing her again, he could scarcely have 
appeared* more delighted at the prospect 
of a speedy meeting. 

“Aurora here!” he said; “at your 
house ? My dear old fellow, you can’t 
mean it. But, of course, I ought to have 
known she’d come to you. She couldn’t 
have done any thing better or wiser, after 
having been so foolish as to doubt me.” 
• “ She came to me for advice. Joint. 
She wanted me to advise her how to act 
for your happiness, — yours, you great 
Yorkshireman, and not her own.” 

“Bless her noble heart!” cried Mr. 
Mellish huskily. “And you told her — ” 

“I told her nothing, my dear fellow; 
but I tell you to take your lawyer down 
to Doctor’s Commons with you to-mor- 
row morning, get a new license, and 
marry your wife for the second time, in 
some quiet, little, out-of-the-way church 
in the city.” 

Aurora had risen very early upon 
that peaceful Sunday morning. The few 
hours of feverish and fitful sleep had 
brought very little comfort to her. She 
stood with her weary head leaning 
agafnst the window-frame, and looked 
hopelessly out into the empty London 
street. She looked out into the desolate 
beginning of a new life, the blank un- 
certainty of an unknown future. All the 
minor miseries peculiar to a toilet in a 
strange room were doubly miserable to 
her. Lucy had brought the poor lug- 
gageless traveller all the paraphernalia 
of the toilet-table, and had arranged every 
thing with her own busy hands. But 
the most insignificant trifle that Aurora 
touched in her cousin’s chamber brought 
back the memory of some costly toy 
chosen for her by her husband. She had 
travelled in her white morning-dress, and 
the soft lace and muslin were none the 
fresher for her journey ; but as two of 
Lucy’s dresses joined together would have 
scarcely fitted her stately cousin, Mrs. 
Mellish was fain to be content with her 
limp muslin. What did it matter ? The 
loving eyes which noted every shred of 
ribbon, every morsel of lace, every fold 
of her garments, were, perhaps, never to 
look upon her again. She twisted her 
hair into a careless mass at the back of 
her head, and had completed her toilet, 
when Lucy came to the door, tenderly 
anxious to know hovv she had slept. 


216 


AUKOEA FLOYD. 


“ I will abide by Talbot’s decision,” 
she repeated to herself ap^aiii and a^ain. 
"If he says it is best for my .dear tliat 
we should part, I will go away for ever. 
I will ask my father to take me far away, 
and my poor darling shall not even 
know where I have gone. I will be 
true in what I do, and will do it tho- 
roughly.” 

She looked to Talbot Bulstrode as a 
wise judge, to wlmse sentence she would 
be willing to submit. Perhaps sbe did 
this because her own heart kept for ever 
repeating, " Go back to the man who 
loves you. Go back, go back ! There 
is no wrong you can do him so bitter as 
to desert him. There is no unhappiness 
you can bring upon him equal to the 
unhappiness of losing you. Let me be 
your guide. Go back, go back 1” 

But this selfish monitor must not be 
listened to. How bitterly this poor 
girl, so old in experience of sorrow, 
remembered the selfish sin of her mad 
marriage I She had refused to sacrifice 
a schoolgirl’s foolish delusion ; she had 
disobeyed the father who had given her 
seventeen years of patient love and de- 
votion ; and she looked at all the misery 
of her youth as the fatal growth of this 
evil seed, so rebelliously sown. Surely 
such a lesson was not to be altogether 
unheeded ! Surely it was powerful 
enough to teach her the duty of sacri- 
fice. It was this thought that steeled 
her against the pleadings of her own 
affection. It was for this that she 
looked to Talbot Bulstrode as the arbi- 
ter of her future. Had she been a 
Roman Catholic, she would have gone 
to h-er confessor, and appealed to a 
priest — who, having no social ties of 
his own, must, of course, be the best 
judge of all the duties involved in do- 
mestic relations — for comfort and suc- 
cor; but being of another faith, she 
went to the man whom she most respect- 
ed, and who, being a husband himself, 
might, as she thought, be able to com- 
prehend the duty that was due to her 
husband. 

She went down-stairs with Lucy into 
a little inner room upon the drawing- 
room floor; a snug apartment, opening 
into a mite of a conservatory. It was 
Mr. and Mrs. Bulstrode’s habit to 
breakfast^ in this cosy little chamber, 
rather tlian in that awful temple of 


i slippery morocco, funereal bronze, and 
ghastly mahogany, which upholsterers 
insist upon as the only legitimate place 
in which an Englishman may take his 
meals. Lucy loved to sit opposite her 
husband at the small round table, and 
minister to his morning appetite from 
her pretty breakfast equipage of silver 
and china. She knew — to the smallest 
weight employed at Apothecaries’ Hall, 
I think — how much sugar Mr. Bulstrode 
liked in his tea. She poured the cream 
into his cup as carefully as if she had 
been making up a prescription. He 
took the simple beverage in a great 
shallow breakfast-cup of fragile tur- 
quoise Sevres, that had cost seven 
guineas ; and had been made for Madame 
du Barry, the rococo merchant had told 
Talbot. (Had his customer been a lady, 
I fear Marie Antoinette would have 
been described as the original possessor 
of the porcelain.) Mrs. Bulstrode loved 
to minister to her husband. She picked 
•the bloated livers of martyred geese out 
of the Strasburg pies for his delectation ; 
she spread the butter upon his dry toast ; 
and pampered and waited on him, serv- 
ing him as only such ^vomen serve their 
idols. But this morning she had her 
cousin’s sorrows to comfort ; and she 
established Aurora in a capacious chintz- 
covered easy-chair on the threshold of 
the conservatory, and seated herself at 
her feet. 

" My poor pale darling,” she said, 
tenderly, " what can I do to bring the 
roses back to your cheeks ?” 

"Love me and pity me, dear,” Au- 
rora answered, gravely; "but don’t ask 
me any questions.” 

The two women sat thus for some 
time, Aurora’s handsome head bent over 
Lucy’s fair face, and her hand clasped 
in both Lucy’s hands. They talked very 
little, and only spoke then of indifferent 
matters, or of Lucy’s happiness and 
Talbot’s parliamentary career. The little 
clock over the chimney-piece struck the 
quarter before eight ; they were very 
early, these unfashionable people ; and 
a minutes afterwards Mrs. Bulstrode 
heard her husband’s step upon the 
stairs, returning from his ante-breakfast 
walk. It was his habit to take a con- 
stitutional stroll in the Green Park now 
and then, so Lucy had thought nothing 
1 of this early excursion. ' 


AURORA FLOYD. 


217 


“ Talbot has let himself in with his 
latch-key,” said Mrs. Bulstrode ; “and 
I may pour out the tea, Aurora. But 
listen, dear; I think there’s some one 
with him.” 

There was no need to bid Aurora 
listen ; she had started from her low 
seat, and stood erect and motionless, 
breathinj^ in a quick, agitated manner, 
and looking toward the door. Besides 
Talbot Bulstrode’s * step there was an- 
other, quicker and heavier; a step she 
knew so well. 

The door was opened, and Talbot 
entered the room, followed by a visitor, 
who pushed aside his host with very 
little attention to the laws of civilized 
society, and, indeed, nearly drove Mr. 
Bulstrode backwards into a gilded basket 
of flowers. But this stalwart John Mel- 
lish had no intention of being unman- 
nerly or brutal. He pushed aside his 
friend only as he would have pushed, or 
tried to push, aside a regiment of sol- 
diers with fixed bayonets, or a Lancaster 
gun, oc a raging ocean, or any other 
impediment that had come between him 
and Aurora. He had her in his arms 
before she could even cry his name 
aloud, in her glad surprise ; and in 
another moment she w^as sobbing on his 
breast. 

“ My darling I my pet I my own !” he 
cried, smoothing her dark hair with his 
broad hand, and blessing her and weeping 
over her, — “ my own love I How could 
you do this ? how could you wrong me 
so much ? My own precious darling 1 
had you learnt to know me no better 
than this in all our happy married life ?” 

“ I came to ask Talbot’s advice, 
John.” she said, earnestly; “and I 
mean to abide by it, however cruel it 
may seem.” 

Mr. Bulstrode smiled gravely, as he 
watched these two foolish people. He 
was very much pleased with his part in 
the little domestic drama ; and he con- 
templated them with a sublime con- 
sciousness of being the author of all this 
happiness. For they were happy. The 
poet has said, there are some moments 
— very rare, very precious, very brief — 
which stand by themselves, and have 
their perfect fulness of joy within their 
own fleeting span, taking nothing from 
the past, demanding nothing of the fu- 
ture. Had John and Aurora known ( 


that they were to be separated by the 
breadth of Europe for the remainder of 
their several lives, they would not the 
less have wept joyful tears at the pure 
blissfulness of this meeting. 

“You asked me for my advice, Au- 
rora,” said Talbot, “ and I bring it you. 
Let the past die with the man who died 
the other night. The future is not yours 
to dispose of; it belongs to your hus- 
band, John Mellish.” 

Having delivered himself of these 
oracular sentences, Mr. Bulstrode seated 
himself at the breakfast-table, and looked 
into the mysterious and cavernous inte- 
rior of a raised pie, with such an intent 
gaze, that it seemed as if he never meant 
to look out of it. He devoted so many 
minutes to this serious contemplation, 
that by the time he looked up again, 
Aurora had become quite calm, while 
Mr. Mellish affected an unnatural gaiety, 
and exhibited no stronger sign of past 
emotion than a certain inflamed appear- 
ance in the region of his eyelids. 

But this stalwart, devoted, impression- 
able Yorkshireman ate a most extraor- 
dinary repast in honor of this reunion. 
He spread mustard on his muffins. He 
poured Worcester sauce into his coffee, 
and cream over his devilled cutlets. He 
showed his gratitude to Lucy by loading 
her plate with comestibles she didn’t 
want. He talked perpetually, and de- 
voured incongruous viands in utter ab- 
sence of mind. He shook hands with 
Talbot so many times across the break- 
fast-table, that he exposed the lives oi 
limbs of the whole party to imminent 
peril from the boiling water in the urn. 
He threw himself into a paroxysm of 
coughing, and made himself scarlet in 
the face, by an injudicious use of cayenne 
pepper ; and he exhibited himself alto- 
gether in such an imbecile light that 
Talbot Bulstrode was compelled to have 
recourse to all sorts of expedients to 
keep the servants out of the ro6m during 
the progress of that rather noisy and 
bewildering repast. 

The Sunday papers were brought to 
the master of the house before breakfast 
was over; and while John talked, ate, 
and gesticulated, Mr. Bulstrode hid him- 
self behind the open leaves of the latest 
edition of the Weekly Dispatch, read- 
ing a paragraph that appeared in that 
( journal. 


AURORA FLOYD. 


218 

This paragraph gave a brief account 
of the murder and the inquest at Mel- 
lish ; and wound up by that rather ste- 
reotyped sentence, in which the public 
are informed that “the local police are 
giving unremitting attention to the af- 
fair, and we think we may venture to 
affirm that they have obtained a clue 
which will most probably lead to the 
early discovery of the guilty party.” 

Talbot Bulstrode, with the newspaper 
still before his face, sat for some little 
time frowning darkly at the page upon 
which this paragraph appeared.' The 
horrible shadow, whose nature he would 
not acknowledge even to himself, once 
more lowered upon the horizon which 
had just seemed so bright and clear. 

“ I would give a thousand pounds,” 
he thought, “if I could find the mur- 
derer of this man.” 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

ON THE WATCH. 

Yery soon after breakfast upon that 
happy Sabbath of reunion and content- 
ment, John Hellish drove Aurora to 
Felden Woods. It was necessary that 
Archibald Floyd should hear the story 
of the trainer’s death from the lips of 
his own children, before newspaper para- 
graphs terrified him with some imper- 
fect outline of the truth. 

The dashing phaeton in which Mr. 
Bulstrode was in the habit of driving 
his wife was brought to the door as the 
church-bells were calling devout citi- 
zens to their morning duties ; and at 
that unseemly hour J ohn Hellish smacked 
his whip, and dashed off in the direction 
of Westminster Bridge. 

Talbot Bulstrode’s horses soon left 
London behind them, and before long 
the phaeton was driving upon trim park- 
like roads, over-stiadowed by luxuriant 
foliage, and bordered here and there by 
exquisitely ordered gardens and rustic 
villas, that glittered whitely in the sun- 
shine. The holy peace of the quiet 
Sabbath was upon every object that 
they passed, even upon the leaves and 
flowers, as it seemed to Aurora. The 
birds sang subdued and murmuring har- 


monies ; the light summer breeze scarcely 
stirred the deep grass, on which the 
lazy cattle stood to watch the phaeton 
dash by. 

Ah, how happy Aurora was, seated 
by the side of the man whose love had 
outlasted every trial ! How happy now 
that the dark wall that had divided 
them was shattered, and they were in- 
deed united ! John Hellish was as ten- 
der and pitying towards her, as a mo- 
ther to her forgiven child. He asked 
no explanations ; he sought to know 
nothing of the past. He was content 
to believe that she had been foolish and 
mistaken ; and that the mistake and 
folly of her life would be buried in the 
grave of the murdered traitor. 

The lodge-keeper at Felden Woods 
exclaimed as he opened the gates to his 
master’s daughter. He was an old man, 
and he had opened the same gates more 
than twenty years before, when the 
banker’s dark-eyed bride had first en- 
tered her husband’s mansion. 

Archibald Floyd welcomed his child- 
ren heartily. How could he ever be 
otherwise than unutterably happy in the 
presence of his darling, however often 
she might come, with whatever eccen- 
tricity she might time her visits ? 

Mrs. Hellish led her father into his 
study. 

“ I must speak to you alone, papa,” 
she said; “but John knows all I have 
to say. There are no secrets between 
us now. There never will be again.” 

Aurora had a painful story to tell her 
father, for she had to confess to him 
that she had deceived him upon the oc- 
casion of her return to Felden after her 
parting with James Conyers. 

“ I told you a story, father,” she 
said, “ when I told you my husband was 
dead. But, Heaven knows, I believed 
that I should be forgiven the sin of that 
falsehood, for I thought that it would 
spare you grief and trouble of mind ; 
and surely any thing would have been 
justifiable that could have done that. I 
suppose good never can come out of 
evil, for I have been bitterly punished 
for my sin. I received a newspaper 
within a few months of my return, in 
which there was a paragraph describing 
the death of James Conyers. The para- 
graph was not correct, for the man had 
I escaped with his life ; and when I mar- 


AURORA FLOYD. 


ried John Mellish, my first husband was 
alive.” 

Archibald Floyd uttered a cry of 
despair, and half rose from his easy- 
chair; but Aurora knelt upon the ground 
by his side, with her- arms about him, 
soothing and comforting him. 

“It is all over now, dear father,” she 
said ; “ it is all over. The man is dead. 
I will tell you how he died by-and-by. 
It is all over. John knowsall ; and I 
am to marry him again. Talbot Bul- 
strode says that ft is necessary, as our 
marriage was not legal. My own dear 
father, there is to be no more secrecy, 
no more unhappiness, — only love, and 
peace, and union for all of us.” 

She told the old man the story of 
the trainer’s death, dwelling very little 
upon the particulars, and telling nothing 
of her own doings that night, except 
that she had been in the wood at the 
time of the murder, and that she had 
heard the pistol fired. 

It was not a pleasant story, this story 
of murder and violence and treachery 
within the boundary of his daughter’s 
home. Even amid Aurora’s assurances 
that all sorrow was past, that doubt and 
uncertainty were to vanish away before se- 
curity and peace, Archibald Floyd could 
not control this feeling. He was restless 
and uneasy in.spite of himself. He took 
John Mellish out upon the terrace in 
the afternoon sunshine, while Aurora 
lay asleep upon one of the sofas in the 
long drawing-room, and talked to him 
of the trainer’s death as they walked up 
and down. There was nothing to be 
elicited from the young squire that threw 
any light upon the catastrophe, and 
Archibald Floyd tried in vain to find 
any issue out of the darkness of the 
mystery. 

“Can you imagine any one having 
any motive for getting rid of this man ?” 
the banker asked. 

John shrugged his shoulders. He 
had been asked this question so often 
before, and had been always obliged to 
give the same reply. 

!N’o ; he knew of no motive which any 
one about Mellish could be likely to 
have. 

“Had the man any money about 
him ?” asked Mr. Floyd. 

“ Goodness knows whether he had or 
not,” John answered carelessly j “but I 


219 

should think it wasn’t likely he had 
much. He had been out of a situation, 
I believe, for some time before he came 
to me, and he had spent a good many 
months in a Prussian hospital. I don’t 
suppose he was worth robbing.” 

The banker remembered the two 
thousand pounds which he had given to 
his daughter. What had Aurora done 
with .that money ? Had she known of 
the trainer’s existence when she asked 
for it ? and had she wanted it for him ? 
She had not explained this in her hur- 
ried story of the murder, and how could 
he press her upon so painful a subject ? 
Why should he not accept her own as- 
surance that all was over, and that no- 
thing remained but peace ? 

Archibald Floyd and his children 
spent a tranquil day together ; not talk- 
ing much, for Aurora was completely 
worn out by the fatigue and excitement 
she had undergone. What had her life 
been but agitation and terror since the 
day upon which Mr. John Pastern’s 
letter had come to Mellish to tell her of 
the existence of her first husband ? She 
slept through the best part of the day, 
lying upon a sofa, and with John Mel- 
lish sitting by her side keeping watch 
over her. She slept while the bells of 
Beckingham church summoned the par- 
ishioners to afternoon service, and while 
her father went to assist in those quiet 
devotions, and to kneel on his hassock 
in the old square pew, and pray for the 
peace of his beloved child. Heaven 
knows how earnestly the old man prayed 
for his daughter’s happiness, and how 
she filled his thoughts ; not distracting 
him from more sacred thoughts, but 
blending her image with his worship in 
alternate prayer and thanksgiving. Those 
who watched him as he sat, with the 
sunshine on his grey head, listening 
reverentially to the sermon, little knew 
how much trouble had been mingled 
with the great prosperity of his life. 
They pointed him out respectfully to 
strangers, as a man whose signature 
across a slip of paper could make that 
oblong morsel of beaten rag into an in- 
calculable sum of money ; a man who 
stood upon a golden pinnacle with the 
Rothschilds, Montefiores and Couttses ; 
who could afford to pay the National 
Debt any morning that the whim seized 
him j and who was yet a plain man, and 


220 


AURORA FLOYD. 


simple as a child, as any body might 
see, the admiring parishioners would 
add, as the banker came out of church 
shaking hands right and left, and nod- 
ding to the charity children. 

I’m afraid the children dropped lower 
curtseys in the pathway of Mr. Floyd 
than even before the Yicar of BecKing- 
ham ; for they had learnt to associate 
the image of the banker with buns and 
tea, with sixpences and oranges, gam- 
bols on the smooth lawn at Felden, and 
jovial feasts in monster tents to the 
music of clashing brazen bands, and 
with even greater treats in the way of 
excursions to a Crystal Palace on a hill, 
an enchanted fairyland of wonders, from 
which it was delicious to return in the 
dewy evening, singing hymns of rejoic- 
ing that shook the vans in which they 
traveled. 

The banker had distributed happiness 
right and left; but the money which 
might have paid the National Debt had 
been impotent to save the life of the 
dark-eyed woman he had loved so ten- 
derly, or to spare him one pang of un- 
easiness about his idolised child. Had 
not that all-powerful wealth been rather 
the primary cause of his daughter’s 
trouble, since it had cast her, young, in- 
experienced, and trusting, a prey into 
the mercenary hands of a bad man, who 
would not have cared to persecute her 
but for the money that had made her 
such a golden prize for any adventurer 
who might please to essay the hazard 
of winning her ? 

With the memory of these things al- 
ways in his mind, it was scarcely strange 
that Archibald Floyd should bear the 
burden of his riches meekly and fear- 
fully, knowing that, whatever he might 
be in the Stock Exchange, he was in 
the sight of Heaven only a feeble old 
man, very assailable by suffering, very 
liable to sorrow, and humbly dependent 
on the mercy of the Hand that is alone 
powerful to spare or to afflict, as seem- 
eth good to Him who guides it. 

Aurora awoke out of her long sleep 
while her father was at church. She 
awoke to find , her husband watching 
her ; the Sunday papers lying forgotten 
on his knee, and his honest eyes fixed on 
the face he loved. 

“My own dear John,” she said, as 
she lifted her head from the pillows, 


supporting herself upon her elbow, and 
stretching out one hand to Mr. Mellish, 
“ my own dear boy, how happy we are 
together now I Will any thing ever 
come to break our happiness again, my 
dear? Can heaven be so cruel as to 
afflict us any more ?” 

The banker’s daughter, in the sover- 
eign vitality of her nature, had rebelled 
against sorrow as a strange and unnatu- 
ral part of her life. She had demanded 
happiness almost as a right ; she had 
wondered at her afflictions, and been 
unable to understand why she should be 
thus afflicted. There are natures which 
accept suffering with a patient meek- 
ness, and acknowledge the justice by 
which they suffer ; but Aurora had never 
done this. Her joyous soul had re- 
volted against sorrow, and she arose now 
in the intense relief which she felt in her 
release from the bonds which had been 
so hateful to her, and challenged Provi- 
dence with her claim to be happy for 
evermore. 

John Mellish thought very seriously 
upon this matter. He could not forget 
the night of the murder, — the night up- 
on which he had ^at alone in his wife’s 
chamber pondering upon his unworthi- 
ness. 

“Do you think that we deserve to 
be happy, Lolly ?” he said presently. 
“ Don’t mistake me, my darling. I know” 
that you’re the best and brightest of 
living creatures, — tender-hearted, lov- 
ing, generous, and true. But do you. 
think that we take life quite seriously 
enough, Lolly dear ? I’m sometimes 
afraid that we are too much like the 
careless children in the pretty childish 
allegory, who played about amongst 
the flowers on the smooth grass in the 
beautiful garden, until it was too late 
to set out upon the long journey on the 
dark road which would have led them 
to Paradise. What shall we do, my 
darling, to deserve the blessings God 
has given us so freely ; the blessings of 
youth and strength, and love and wealth ? 
What shall we do, dear ? I don’t want 
to turn Mellish into a Philanstery ex- 
actly, nor to give up my racing-stud, if 
I can help it,” John said reflectively ; 
“but I want to do something, Lolly, to 
prove that I am grateful to Providence. 
Shall we build a lot of schools, or a 
church, or alms-houses, or something 


AURORA FLOYD. 


221 


of that sort ? Lofthouse would like me 
to put up a painted window in Mellish 
church, and a new pulpit with a patent 
sounding-board ; but I can’t see that 
painted windows and sounding-boards 
do much good in a general way, I want 
to do something, Aurora, to prove my 
gratitude to the Providence that has 
given me the loveliest and best of wo- 
men for my true-hearted wife.” 

The banker’s daughter smiled almost 
mournfully upon her devoted, husband. 

“ Have I been such a blessing to you, 
John,” she said, “that you should be 
grateful for me ? Have I not brought 
you far more sorrow than happiness, my 
poor dear ?” 

“No,” shouted Mr. Mellish emphati- 
cally. “ The sorrow you have brought 
me has been nothing to the joy I have 
felt in your love. My own dearest girl, 
to be sitting here by your side to-day, 
and to hear you tell me ‘that you love 
me, is enough happiness to set against 
all the trouble of mind that I have en- 
dured since the man that is dead came 
to Mellish.” 

I hope my poor John Mellish will be 
forgiven if he talked a great deal of 
nonsense to the wife he loved. He had 
been her lover from the first moment in 
which he had seen her, darkly beautiful, 
upon the gusty Brighton Parade ; and 
he was her lover still. No shadow of 
contempt had ever grown out of his fa- 
miliarity with her. And indeed I am 
.disposed to take exception to that old 
proverb ; or at least to believe that con- 
tempt is only engendered of familiarity 
with things which are in themselves base 
and spurious. The priest, who is fa- 
miliar with the altar, learns no contempt 
for its sacred images ; but it is rather 
the ignorant ^neophyte who sneers and 
snigg'ers at things which he cannot un- 
derstand. The artist becomes only more 
reverent as toil and study make him 
more familiar with his art; its eternal 
sublimity grows upon him, and he wor- 
ships the far-away Goddess of Per- 
fection as humbly when he drops his 
brush or his chisel after a life of patient 
labor, as he did when first he ground 
color or pointed rough blocks of marble 
for his master. And I cannot believe 
that a good man’s respect for the woman 
he loves can be lessened by that sweet 


and every-day familiarity in which a 
hundred household virtues and gentle 
beauties — never dreamed of in the ball- 
rooms where he first danced with an 
unknown idol in gauzy robes and glim- 
mering jewels — grow upon him, until he 
confesses that the wife of ten years’ 
standing is even ten times dearer than 
the bride of a week’s honeymoon. 

Archibald Floyd came back from 
church, and found his two children sit- 
ting side by side in one of the broad 
windows, watching for his arrival and 
whispering together like lovers, as I 
have said they were. 

They dined pleasantly together later 
in the evening ; and a little after dark 
the phaeton was brought round to the 
terrace-steps, and Aurora kissed her 
father as she wished him good night. 

“ You will come up to town, and be 
present at the marriage, sir, I know,” 
John whispered, as he took his father- 
in-law’s hand. “ Talbot Bulstrode will 
arrange all about it. It is to take place 
at some out-of-the-way little church in 
the City. Nobody will be any the wiser, 
and Aurora and I will go back to Mel- 
lish as quietly as possible. There’s only 
Lofthouse and Hayward know the secret 
of. the certificate, and they — ” 

John Mellish stopped suddenly. He 
remembered Mrs. Powell’s parting sting. 
She knew the secret. But how could 
she have come by that knowledge ? It 
was impossible that either Lofthouse or 
Hayward could have told her. They 
were both honorable men, and they had 
pledged themselves to be silent. 

Archibald Floyd did not observe his 
son-in-law’s embarrassment ; and the 
phaeton drove away, leaving the old 
man standing on the terrace-steps look- 
ing after his daughter. 

“ I must shut up this place,” he 
thought, “ and go to Mellish to finish 
my days. I cannot endure these separa- 
tions ; I cannot bear this suspense. It 
is a pitiful sham, my keeping house, and 
•living in all this dreary grandeur. I’ll 
shut up the place, and ask my daughter 
to give me a quiet corner in her York- 
shire home, and a grave in the parish 
churchyard.” 

The lodge-keeper turned out of his 
comfortable Gothic habitation to open 
the clanking iron gates for the phaeton j 


222 


AURORA FLOYD. 


but John drew up his horses before they 
dashed into the road, for he saw that the 
man wanted to speak to him. 

“ What is it, Forbes he asked. 

“ Oh, it’s nothing particular, sir,” the 
man said, “and perhaps I oughtn’t to 
trouble you about it ; but did you ex- 
pect any one down to-day, sir ?” 

“Expect any one here? — no!” ex- 
claimed John. 

“ There’s been a person inquirin’, sir, 
this afternoon,^ — two persons, I may say, 
ii\ a shay-cart, — but one of ’em asked 
particular if you was here, sir, and if 
Mrs. Mellish was here ; and when I said 
yes, you was, the gent says it wasn’t 
worth troublin’ you about, the business 
as he’d come upon, and as he’d call 
another time. And he asked me what 
time you’d be likely to be leavin’ the 
Woods; and I said I made no doubt 
you’d stay to dinner up at the house. 
So he says ‘All right,’ and drives off.” 

“ He left no message, then ?” 

“ No, sir. He said nothin’ more than 
what I’ve told you.” 

“Then his business could have been 
of no great importance, Forbes,” an- 
swered John, laughing. “So we needn’t 
worry our heads about him. Good 
night.” 

Mr. Mellish dropped a five-shilling 
piece into the lodge-keeper’s hand, gave 
Talbot’s horses their heads, and the 
phaeton rolled off London-wards over 
the crisp gravel of the well-kept Beck- 
enham roads. 

“ Who could the man have been ?” 
Aurora asked, as they left the gates. 

“ Goodness knows, my dear,” John 
answered carelessly. “ Somebody on 
racing business, perhaps.” 

Racing business seems to be in itself 
such a mysterious business that it is no 
strange thing for mysterious people to 
be always turning up in relation to it. 
Aurora, therefore, was content to accept 
this explanation ; but not without some 
degree of wonderment. 

“ I can’t understand the man coming 
to Felden after you, John,” she said. 
“ How could he know that you were to 
be there to-day?” 

“ Ah, how indeed, Lolly !” returned 
Mr. Mellish. “He chanced it, I sup- 
pose. A sharp customer, no doubt ; 
wants to sell a horse, I dare say, and 


heard I didn’t mind giving a good price 
for a good thing.” 

Mr. Mellish might have gone even 
further than this, for there were many 
horsey gentlemen in his neighborhood, 
past masters in the art they practised, 
who were wont to say that the young 
squire, judiciously manipulated, might 
be induced to give a remarkably good 
price for a very bad thing ; and there 
were many broken-down, slim-legged 
horses in the Mellish stables that bore 
witness to the same fact. These needy 
chevaliers d’esprit, who think that 
Burkes’ landed gentry were created by 
Providence and endowed with the goods 
of this world for their especial benefit, 
just as pigeons are made plump and 
nice-eating for the delectation of hawks, 
drove a wholesale trade upon the young 
man’s frank simplicity and hearty belief 
in his fellow-creatures. I think it is 
Eliza Cook who says, “ It is better to 
trust and be deceived, than own the 
mean, poor spirit that betrays and if 
there is any happiness in being “ done,” 
poor John enjoyed that fleeting delight 
pretty frequently. 

There was a turn in the road between 
Beckenham and Norwood; and as the 
phaeton, swept round, a chaise or dog- 
cart, a shabby vehicle enough, with a 
rakish-looking horse, drove close up, and 
the man who was driving asked the 
squire to put’ him in the nearest w'ay to 
London. The vehicle had been behind 
them all the way from Felden, but had 
kept at a respectful distance until now. 

“ Do you want to get to the City or 
the West End ?” John asked. 

“ The West End.” 

“ Then you can’t do better than follow 
us,” answered Mr. Mellish. “ The road’s 
clean enough, and your horse seems a 
good one to go. You can keep 'us in 
sight, I suppose ?” 

“Yes, sir, and thank ye.” 

“ All right, then.” 

Talbot Bulstrode’s thorough -breds 
• dashed off, but the rakish-looking horse 
kept his ground behind them. He had 
something of the insolent, off-hand assu- 
rance of a butcher’s horse, accustomed 
to whirl a bare-headed, blue-coated mas- 
ter through the sharp morning air. 

“ I was right, Lolly,” Mr. Mellish said, 
as he left the dog-cart behind. 


AURORA FLOYD. 


How do you mean, dear asked 
Aurora. 

“The man who spoke to us just now 
is the man who has been inquiring for 
me at Felden. He’s a Yorkshireman.” 

“ A Yorkshireman I” 

“Yes; didn’t you hear the north- 
country twang ?” 

No ; ■ she had not listened to the 
man, nor heeded him. How should she 
think of any thing but her new-born 
happiness — the new-jborn confidence be- 
tween herself and the husband she loved ? 

Do not think her hard-hearted or 
cruel if she forgot that it was the death 
of a fellow-creature, a sinful man stricken 
down in the prime of youth and health, 
that had given her this welcome release. 
She had suffered so much, that the re- 
lease conld not be otherwise than wel- 
come, let it come how it might. 

Her nature, frank and open as the 
day, had been dwarfed and crippled by 
the secret that had blighted her life. 
Can it be wondered, then, that she re- 
joiced now that all need of secrecy was 
over, and this generous spirit might ex- 
pand as it pleased ? 

It was past ten o’clock when the 
phaeton turned into Half-Moon Street. 
The men in the dog-cart had followed 
John’s directions to the letter ; for it 
was only in Piccadilly that Mr. Mellish 
had lost sight of them amongst other 
vehicles travelling backwards and for- 
wards on the lamp-lit thoroughfare. 

Talbot and Lucy received their visit- 
ors in one of the pretty little drawing- 
rooms. The young husband and wife 
had spent a quiet day together ; going 
to church in the morning and afternoon, 
dining alone, and sitting in the twilight, 
talking happily and confidentially. Mr. 
Bulstrode was no Sabbath-breaker; and 
John Mellish had reason to consider 
himself a peculiarly privileged person, 
inasmuch as the thorough -breds had 
been permitted to leave their stables for 
his service; to say nothing of the groom 
who had been absent from his hard seat 
in the servants’ pew at a fashionable 
chapel, in order that he might accom- 
pany John and Aurora to Felden. 

The little party sat up rather late, 
Aurora and Lucy talking affectionately 
together, side by side, upon a sofa in ’ 
the shadow of the room, while the two 
men lounged in the open window. John 


223 

told his host the history of the day, and 
in doing so casually mentioned the man 
who had asked him the way to London. 

Strange to say, Talbot Bulstrode 
seemed especially interested in this part 
of the story. He asked several ques- 
tions about the men. He asked what 
they were like ; what was said by either 
of them ; and made many other inquiries, 
which seemed equally trivial. 

“ Then they followed you into town, 
John ?” he said finally. 

“ Yes ; I only lost sight of them in 
Piccadilly, five minutes before I turned 
the corner of the street.” 

“ Do you think they had any motive 
in following you ?” asked Talbot. 

“Well, I fancy so; they’re on the 
look-out for information, I expect. The 
man who spoke to me looked something 
like a tout. I’ve heard that Lord Stam- 
ford’s rather anxious about my West- 
Australian colt, the Pork Butcher. Per- 
haps his people have set these men to 
work to find out if I’m going to run 
him in the Leger.” 

Talbot Bulstrode smiled bitterly, al- 
most mournfully, at the vanity of horse- 
flesh. It was painful to see this light- 
hearted young squire looking in such 
ignorant hopefulness towards a horizon 
upon which graver and more thoughtful 
men could see a dreadful shadow lower- 
ing. Mr. Bulstrode was standing close 
to the balcony; he stepped out amongst 
the china boxes of mignonette, and 
looked down into the quiet street. A 
man was leaning against a lamp-post 
some few paces from Talbot’s house 
smoking a cigar, and with his face 
turned towards the balcony. He finished 
his cigar deliberately, threw the end into 
the road, and walked away while Talbot 
kept watch ; but Mr. Bulstrode did not 
leave his post of observation, and about 
a quarter of an hour afterwards he saw 
the same man lounging slowly along the 
pavement upon the other side of the 
street. John, who sat within the shadow 
of the window-curtains, lolling against 
them, and creasing their delicate folds 
with the heavy pressure of his broad 
back, was utterly unconscious of all 
this. 

Early the next morning Mr. Bulstrode 
and Mr. Mellish took a Hansom cab, 
and rattled down to Doctors’ Commons, 
where, for the second time in his life, 


224 


AURORA FLOYD. 


John gave himself up to be fought for 
by white -aproned ecclesiastical touts, 
and eventually obtained the Archbishop 
of Canterbury’s gracious sanction of his 
marriage with Aurora, widow of James 
Conyers, only daughter of Archibald 
Floyd, banker. From Doctors’ Com- 
mons the two gentlemen drove to a cer- 
tain quiet, out-of-the-way church within 
the sound of Bow bells, but so com- 
pletely hidden amongst piles of ware- 
houses, top heavy chimneys, sloping 
roofs, and other eccentricities of ma- 
sonry, that any unhappy bridegroom, 
who had appointed to be married there, 
was likely enough to spend the whole 
of the wedding-day in futile endeavors 
to find the church-door. Here John 
discovered a mouldy clerk, who was 
fetched from some habitation in the 
neighborhood wdth considerable diffi- 
culty, by a boy, who volunteered to ac- 
complish any thing under heaven for a 
certain* copper consideration ; and to 
this clerk Mr. Mellish gave notice of a 
marriage which was to take place upon 
the following day, by special license. 

“ I’ll take my second marriage-certi- 
ficate back with me,” John said, as he 
left the church ; “ and then I should 
like to see who’ll dare to look me inr the 
face, and tell me that my darling is not 
my own lawfully- wedded wife.” 

He was thinking of Mrs. Powell as he 
said this. He was thinking of the pale, 
spiteful eyes that had looked at him, 
and of the woman’s tongue that had 
stabbed him with all a little nature’s 
great capacity for hate. He would be 
able to defy her now ; he would be able 
to defy every creature in the world who 
dared to breathe a syllable against his 
beloved wife. 

Early the next morning the marriage 
took place. Archibald Floyd, Talbot 
Bulstrode, and Lucy were the only wit- 
nesses; that is to say, the only witnesses 
with the exception of the clerk and the 
pew-opener, and a couple of men who 
lounged into the church when the cere- 
mony was half over, and slouched about 
one of the side aisles, looking at the 
monuments, and talking to each other 
in whispers, until the parson took off his 
surplice, and John came out of the vestry 
with his wife upon his arm. 

Mr. and Mrs. Mellish did not return to 
Half-Moon Street j they drove straight 


to the Great Northern Station, whence 
they started by the afternoon express for 
Doncaster. John wns anxious to re- 
turn ; for remember that he had left his 
household under very peculiar circum- 
stances, and strange reports might have 
arisen in his absence. 

The young squire would perhaps 
scarcely have thought of this, had not 
the idea been suggested to him by Tal- 
bot Bulstrode, who particularly urged 
upon him the expediency of returning 
immediately. 

“ Go back, John,” said Mr. Bulstrode, 
“without an hour’s unnecessary delay. 
If by any chance there should be some 
further disturbance about this murder, it 
will be much better for you, and Aurora 
too, to be on the spot. I will come 
down to Mellish myself in a day or two, 
and will bring Lucy with me, if you will 
allow me.” 

“Allow you, my dear Talbot !” 

“ I will come, then. Good by, and 
God bless you ! Take care of your 
wife.” 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

CAPTAIN PRODDER GOES BACK TO DON- 
CASTER. 

Mr. Samuel Prodder, returning to 
London after having played his insig- 
nificant part in the tragedy at Felden 
Woods, found that city singularly dull 
and gloomy. He put up at some dismal 
boarding-house, situated amid a mazy 
labyrinth of brick and mortar between 
the Tower and Wapping, and having re- 
lations with another boarding-house iu 
Liverpool. He took up his abode at 
this place, in which he was known and 
respected. He drank rum-and-water, 
and played cribbage with other seamen, 
made after the same pattern as himself. 
He even went to an East-End theatre 
upon the Saturday night after the mur- 
der, and sat out the representation of a 
nautical drama, which he would have 
been glad to have believed in, had it not 
promulgated such wild theories in the 
science of navigation, and exhibited such 
extraordinary experiments in the ma- 
noeuvring of the man-of-war, upon which 
the action of the play took place, as to 


AUROK A 

cause the captain’s hair to stand on end 
in the intensity of his wonder. The 
things people did upon that ship curdled 
Samuel Prodder’s blood, as he sat in the 
lonely grandeur of the eighteenpenny 
boxes. It was quite a common thing 
for them to walk unhesitatingly through 
the bulwarks and disappear in what 
ought to have been the sea. The extent 
of browbeating and humiliation borne 
by the captain of that noble vessel ; the 
amount of authority exercised by a sailor 
with loose legs ; the agonies of sea- 
sickness, represented by a comic coun- 
tryman, who had no particular business 
on board the gallant bark ; the propor- 
tion of hornpipe^dancing and nautical 
ballad-singing gone through, as com- 
pared to the work that was done, — all 
combined to impress poor Samuel with 
such a novel view of her Majesty’s naval 
service, that he was very glad when the 
captain who had been browbeaten sud- 
denly repented of all his sins, — not with- 
out a sharp reminder from the prompter, 
who informed the dramatis personce in 
a confidential voice that it was parst 
twelve, and they’d better cut it short, — 
joined the hands of the contumacious 
sailor and a young lady in white muslin, 
and begged them to be ’appy. 

It was in vain that the captain sought 
distraction from the one idea upon which 
he had perpetually brooded since the 
night of his visit to Mellish Park. He 
would be wanted in Yorkshire to tell 
what he knew of the dark history of 
that fatal night. He would be called 
upon to declare at what hour he had en- 
tered the wood, whom he had met there, 
what he had seen and heard there. They 
would extort from him that which he 
would have died rather than tell. They 
would cross-examine, and bewilder, and 
torment him, until he told them every 
thing, — until lie repeated, syllable' by 
syllable, the passionate words that had 
been said, — until he told them how, 
within a quarter of an hour of the firing 
of the ])istol, he had been the witness 
of a desperate* scene between his niece 
and the murdered man, — a scene in 
which concentrated hate, vengeful fury, 
illimitable disdain and detestation had 
been expressed bj her — by her alone : — 
the man had been calm and moderate 
enough. It was she who had been 
14 


FLOYD. 225 

angry ; it was she who had given loud 
utterance to her hate. 

Now, by reason of one of those 
strange inconsistencies common to weak 
human nature, the captain, though pos- 
sessed night and day by a blind terror 
of being suddenly pounced upon by the 
minions of the law and compelled to 
betray his niece’s secret, could not rest 
in his safe retreat amid the labyrinths 
of Wapping, but must needs pine to re- 
turn to the scene of the murder. He 
wanted to know the result of the inquest. 
The Sunday papers gave a very meagre 
account, only hinting darkly at sus- 
pected parties., He wanted to ascertain 
for himself what had happened at the 
inquest, and whether his absence had 
given rise to suspicion. He wanted to 
see his niece again, — to see her in the 
daylight, undisturbed by passion. He 
wanted to see this beautiful tigress in 
her calmer moods, if she ever had any 
calmer moods. Heaven knows the sim- 
ple merchant-captain was well-nigh dis- 
tracted as bethought of his sister Eliza’s 
child, and the awful circumstances of 
his first and only meeting with her. 

Was she — that which he feared people 
might be led to think her if they heard 
the story of that scene in the wood ? 
No, no, no 1 

She was his sister’s child, — the child 
of that merry, impetuous little girl, who 
had worn a pinafore and played hop- 
scotch. He remembered his sister flying 
into a rage with one Tommy Barnes for 
unfair practices in that very game, and 
upbraiding him almost as passionately 
as Aurora had upbraided the dead man. 
But if Tommy Barnes had been found 
strangled by a skipping-rope, or shot 
dead from a pea-shooter in the next 
street a quarter of an hour afterwards, 
would Eliza’s brother have thought that 
she must needs be guilty of the boy’s 
murder ? The captain had gone so far 
as to reason thus in his trouble of mind. 
His sister Eliza’s child would be likely 
to be passionate and impetuous ; but his 
sister Eliza’s child would be a generous, 
warm-hearted creature, incapable of any 
cruelty in either thought or deed. He 
remembered his sister Eliza boxing his 
ears on the occasion of his gouging out 
the eyes of her wax-doll ; but he re- 
membered the same dark-eyed sister sob- 


226 


AURORA FLOYD. 


bing piteously at the spectacle of a lamb 
that a heartless butcher was dragging to 
the slaughter-house. 

But tlie more seriously Captain Prod- 
der revolved this question in his mind, 
the more decidedly his inclination pointed 
to Doncaster ; and early upon that very 
morning on which the quiet marriage 
had taken place in the obscure City 
church, he repaired to a magnificent Is- 
raelitish temple of fashion in' the Mino- 
ries, and there ordered a suit of such 
clothes as were most affected by elegant 
landsmen. The Israelitish salesman re- 
commended something light and lively 
in the fancy-check line ; and Mr. Prod- 
dcr, submitting to that authority as be- 
yond all question, invested himself in a 
suit which he had contemplated solemnly 
athwart a vast expanse of plate-glass, 
before entering the temple of the Graces. 
It was “our aristocratic tourist,” at se- 
venty-seven shillings and sixpence, and 
was made of a fleecy and rather pow- 
dery-looking cloth ; in which the hues 
of baked and unbaked bricks predomi- 
nated over a more delicate hearth-stone 
tint, — which latter the shopman declared 
to be a color that West-End tailors had 
vainly striven to emulate. 

The captain, dressed in our “aristo- 
cratic tourist,”’ which suit was of the 
ultra cut-away and peg-toppy order, and 
.with his sleeves and trousers inflated by 
any chance summer’s breeze, had per- 
haps more of the appearance of a tom- 
bola than is quite in accordance with a 
strictly artistic view of the human figure. 
In his desire to make himself utterly ir- 
recognisable as the seafaring man who 
had carried the tidings of the murder 
to Mellish Park, the captain had tortured 
himself by substituting a tight circular 
collar and a wisp of purple ribbon for 
the honest half-yard of snowy linen which 
it had been his habit to wear turned 
over the loose collar of his blue coat. 
He suffered acute agonies from this mo- 
dern device, but he bore them bravely ; 
and he went straight from the tailor’s to 
the Great Northern Railway Station, 
where lie took his ticket for DonCaster. 
He meant to visit that town as an aris- 
tocratic tourist ; he would keep himself 
aloof from the neighborhood of Mel- 
lish Park, but he would be sure to hear 
the result of the inquest, and he would 
be able to ascertain for himself whether 


any trouble had come upon his sister’s 
child. 

The sea-captain did not travel by that 
express which carried Mr. and Mrs. 
Mellish to Doncaster, but by an earlier 
and slower train, which lumbered quietly 
along the road, conveying inferior per- 
sons, to whom time was not measured 
by a golden standard, and who smoked, 
and slept, and ate, and drank resignedly 
enough through the eight or nine liours’ 
journey. 

It was dusk when Samuel Prodder 
reached the quiet racing-town from 
which he had fled away in the dead of 
the night so short a time before. He 
left the station, and made his way to the 
market-place, and from the market- 
place he struck into a narrow lane that 
led him to an obscure street upon the 
outskirts of the town. He had a great 
terror of being led by some unhappy 
accident into the neighborhood of the 
“ Reindeer,” lest he should be recog- 
nized by some hanger-on of that hotel. 

Half-way between the beginning of 
the straggling street and the point at 
which it dwindled and shrank away into 
a country lane, the captain found a lit- 
tle public house called the “ Crooked 
Rabbit,” — such an obscure and out-of- 
the-way place of entertainment that poor 
Samuel thought himself safe in seeking 
for rest and refreshment within its dingy 
walls. There was a framed and glazed 
legend of “good beds” hanging behind 
an opaque window-pane, — beds for 
which the landlord of the “ Crooked 
Rabbit” was in the habit of asking and 
receiving almost fabulous prices during 
the great Leger week. . But there seemed 
little enough doing at the humble tavern 
just now, and Captain Prodder walked 
boldly in, ordered a steak and a pint of 
ale, with a glass of rum-and-water, hot, 
to follow, at the bar, and engaged one 
of the good beds for his accommoda- 
tion. The landlord, who was a fat 
man, lounged with his back against the 
bar, reading the sporting news in the 
Manchester Guardian ; and it was the 
landlady who took Mr. Prodder’s or- 
ders and showed him the way into an 
awkwardly-shaped parlor, which .was 
much below the rest of the house, and 
into which the unitiated visitor was apt 
to precipitate himself head foremost, as 
into a well or pit. There w'ere several 


AURORA FLOYD. 


227 


small mahogany tables in this room, all 
adorned with sticky arabesques formed 
by the wet impressions of the bottom 
rims of pewter pots ; there were so many 
spittoons that it was almost impossible 
to walk from one end of the room to 
the other without taking unintentional 
foot-baths of sawdust; there was an old 
bagatelle table, the cloth of which had 
changed from green to dingy yellow, and 
was frayed and tattered like a poor man’s 
coat ; and there was a low window, the 
sill of which was almost on a level with 
the pavement of the street. 

The merchant-captain threw off his 
hat, loosened the slip of ribbon and the 
torturing circular collar supplied him by 
the Israelitish outfitter, and cast himself 
into a shining mahogany arm-chair close 
to this window. The lower panes were 
shrouded by a crimson curtain, and he 
lifted this very cautiously and peered for 
a few moments into the street. It was 
lonely enough and quiet enough in the 
dusky summer’s evening. Here and 
there lights twinkled in a shop-window, . 
and upon one threshold a man stood 
talking to his neighbor. With one 
thought always paramount in his mind, 
it is scarcely strange that Samuel Prod- 
der should fancy these people must neces- 
sarily be talking of the murder. 

The landlady brought the captain the 
steak he had ordered, and the tired tra- 
veller seated himself at one of the tables 
and discussed his simple meal. He had 
eaten nothing since seven o’clock that 
morning, and he made very short work 
of the three-quarters of a pound of meat 
that had been cooked for him. He fin- 
ished his beer, drank his rum-and-water, 
smoked a pipe, and then, as he had the 
room still to himself, he made an im- 
promptu couch of Windsor chairs ar- 
ranged in a row, and, in his own par- 
lance, turned-in upon this rough ham- 
mock to take a brief stretch. 

He might have set his mind at nest per- 
haps before this, had he chosen. He could 
have questioned the landlady about the 
murder at Mellish Park ; she was likely 
to know as much as any one else he 
might meet at the “Crooked Rabbit.” 
But he had refrained from doing this 
because he did not wish to draw atten- 
tion to himself in any way as a person 
in the smallest degree interested in the 
murder. How did he know what in- 


quiries had possibly been made for the 
missing witness ? There was perhaps 
vsome enormous reward offered for his 
apprehension, and a word or a look 
might betray him to the greedy eyes of 
those upon the w^atch to obtain it. 

Remember that this broad-shouldered 
seafaring man was as ignorant as a child 
of all things beyond the deck of his own 
vessel, and the watery highroads he had 
been wont to navigate. Life along shore 
was a solemn mystery to him, — the law 
of the British dominions a complication 
of inscrutable enigmas, only to be spoken 
of and thought of in a spirit of reverence 
and wonder. If any body had told him 
that he was likely to be seized upon as 
an accessory before the fact, and hung 
out of hand for his passive part in the 
Mellish catastrophe, he would have be- 
lieved them implicitly. How did he 
know how many Acts of Parliament his 
conduct in leaving Doncaster without 
giving his evidence might come under ? 
It might be high treason, lese majesty, — 
any thing in the world that is unpro- 
nounceable and awful, — for aught this 
simple sailor knew to the contrary. But 
in all this it was not his own safety that 
Captain Prodder thought of. That was 
of very little moment to this light- 
hearted, easy-going sailor. He had per- 
illed his life too often on the high seas 
to set any exaggerated value upon it 
ashore. If they chose to hang an inno- 
cent man, they must do their worst ; it 
would be their mistake, not^iis ; and he 
had a simple seaman-like faith, rather 
vague, perhaps, and not very reduceable 
to any thing like thirty-nine articles, 
that told him that there were sweet 
little cherubs sitting up aloft who would 
take good care that any such sublu- 
nary mistake should be- rectified in a 
certain supernal log-book, upon whose 
pages Samuel Prodder hoped to find 
himself set down as an honest and active 
sailor, always humbly obedient to the 
signals of his Commander. 

It was for his niece’s sake, then, that 
the sailor dreaded any discovery of his 
whereabouts ; and it was for her sake 
that he resolved upon exercising the 
greatest degree of caution of which his 
simple nature was capable. 

“ I won’t ask a single question,” he 
thought ; “ there’s sure to be a pack of 
lubbers dropping in here by and by,. and 


228 


AUROKA FLOYD. 


I shall hear ’em talking about the busi- 
ness as likely as not. These country 
folks would have nothing to talk about 
if they didn’t overhaul the ship’s-books 
of their betters.” 

The captain slept soundly for upwards 
of an hour, and was awakened at the 
end of that time by the sound of voices 
in the room, and the fumes of tobacco. 
The gas was flaring high in the low- 
roofed parlor when he opened his eyes, 
and at first he could scarcely distinguish 
the occupants of the room for the blind- 
ing glare of light. 

“I won’t get up,” he thought; “I’ll 
sham asleep for a bit, and see whether 
they happen to talk about the business.” 

There were only three men in the 
room. One of them was the landlord, 
whom Samuel Prodder had seen reading 
in the bar ; and the other two were 
shabby-looking men, with by no means 
too respectable a stamp either upon 
their persons or their manners. One of 
them wore a velveteen cut-away coat 
with big brass buttons, knee-breeches, 
blue stockings, and high-lows. The other 
was a pale-faced man, with mutton-chop 
whiskers, and dressed in a shabby-genteel 
costume, that gave indication of general 
vagabondage rather than of any particu- 
lar occupation. 

They were talking of horses when 
Captain Prodder awoke, and the sailor 
lay for some time listening to a jargon 
that was utterly unintelligible to him. 
The men talked of Lord Zetland’s lot, 
of Lord Glasgow’s lot, and the Ledger 
and the Cup, and made offers to bet with 
each other, and quarrelled about the 
terms, and never came to an agreement, 
in a manner that was utterly bewildering 
to poor Samuel ; but he waited patiently, 
still feigning to be asleep, and not in any 
way disturbed by the men, who did not 
condescend to take any notice of him. 

“They’ll talk of the other business 
presently,” he thought ; “ they’re safe to 
talk of it.” 

Mr. Prodder was right. 

After discussing the conflicting merits 
of half the horses in the racing calendar, 
the three men abandoned the fascinating 
subject ; and the landlord re-entering the 
room after having left it to fetch a fresh 
supply of beer for his guests, asked if 
either of them had heard if any thing 


new had turned up about that businesi 
at Mellish. 

“ There’s a letter in to-day’s Guard- 
mn,” he added, before receiving any re- 
ply to his question, “ and a pretty strong 
one. It tries to fix the murder upon 
some one in the house, but don’t exactly 
name the party. It wouldn't be safe to 
do that yet awhile, I suppose.” 

Upon the request of the two men, the 
landlord of the “ Crooked Rabbit” read 
the letter in the Manchester daily paper. 
It was a very clever letter, and a spirited 
one, giving a synopsis of the proceedings 
at the inquest, and commenting very 
severely upon the manner in which that 
investigation had been conducted. Mr. 
Prodder quailed until the Windsor chairs 
trembled beneath him as the landlord 
read one passage, in which it was re- 
marked that the stranger who carried 
the news of. the murder to the house of 
the victim’s employer, the man who had 
heard the report of the pistol, and had 
been chiefly instrumental in the finding 
of the body, had not been forthcoming 
at the inquest. 

“He had disappeared mysteriously and 
abruptly, and no efforts were made to 
find him,” wrote the correspondent of 
the Guardian. “What assurance can 
be given for the safety of any man’s life 
when such a crime as the Mellish Park 
murder is investigated in this loose and 
indiflerent manner ? The catastrophe 
occurred within the boundary of the 
park-fence. Let it be discovered whether 
any person in the Mellish household had 
a motive for the destruction of James 
Conyers. The man was a stranger to 
the neighborhood. He was not likely, 
therefore, to have made enemies outside 
the boundary of his employer’s estate, 
but he may have had some secret foe 
within that limit. Who was he ? where 
did he come from ? what were his ante- 
cedents and associations ? Let each one 
of thes& questions be fully sifted, and let 
a cordon be drawn round the house, and 
let every creature living in it be held 
under the surveillance of the law until 
patient investigation has done its work, 
and such evidence has been collected as 
must lead to the detection of the guilty 
person.” 

To this effect was the letter which the 
landlord read in a loud and didactic 


AURORA FLOYD. 


manner, that was very imposing, though 
not without a few stumUles over some 
hard words, and a good deal of slap- 
dash jumping at others. 

Samuel Prodder could make very little 
of the composition, except that it was 
perfectly clear he had been missed at the 
inquest, and his absence commented 
upoft. The landlord and the shabby- 
genteel man talked long and discursively 
upon the matter ; the man in the vel- 
veteen coat, who was evidently a thor- 
ough bred cockney and only newly ar- 
rived in Doncaster, required to be told 
the whole story before he was upon a 
footing with the other two. He was 
very quiet, and generally spoke between 
his teeth, rarely taking the unnecessary 
trouble of removing his short clay-pipe 
from his mouth, except when it required 
refilling. He listened to the story of the 
murder very intently, keeping one eye 
upon the speaker and the other on his 
pipe, and nodding approvingly now and 
then in the course of the narrative. 

He took his pipe from his mouth when 
the story was finished, and filled it from 
a gutta-percha pouch, which had to be 
turned inside-out in some mysterious 
manner before the tobacco could be ex- 
tricated from it. While he was packing 
the loose fragments of shag or birds-eye 
neatly into the bowl of the pipe with his 
stumpy little finger, he said, with supreme 
carelessness, 

“I know’d Jim Conyers.” 

“ Did you now ?” exclaimed the land- 
lord, opening his eyes very wide. 

“ 1 know’d him,’’ repeated the man, 
*‘as intimate as I know’d my own mo- 
ther ; and when I read of the murder in 
the newspaper last Sunday, you might 
have knocked me down with a feather. 

‘ Jim’s got it at last,’ I said ; for he was 
one of them coves that goes through the 
world cock-a-doodling over other people 
to Rich an extent that when they do drop 
in for it, there's not many particular 
sorry for ’em. He was one of your self- 
ish chaps, this here; and when a chap 
goes through this life makin’ it his 
leadin’ principle to care about nobod}^, 
he musn’t be surprised if it ends by no- 
body carin’ for him. Yes, I k'now’d Jim 
Conyers,” added the man, slowly and 
thoughtfully, “and I know’d him under 
rather pecooliar circumstances.” 

The landlord and the other man 


229 

pricked up their ears at this point of the 
conversation. 

The trainer at Mellish Park had, as 
we know, risen to popularity from the 
hour in which he had fallen upon the 
dewy turf in the wood, shot through the 
heart. 

“ If there wasn’t any partiklar objec- 
tions,” the landlord of the “ Crooked 
Rabbit” said, presently, “ I should on- 
commonly like to hear any thing you’ve 
got to tell about the poor chap. There’s 
a deal of interest took about the matter 
in Doncaster, and my customers have 
scarcely talked of any thing else since 
the inquest.” 

The man in the velveteen coat rubbed 
his chin and smoked his pipe reflect- 
ively. He was evidently not a very 
communicative man ; but it was also 
evident that he was rather gratified by 
the distinction of his position in the 
little public-house parlor. 

This man was no other than Mr. 
Matthew Harrison, the dog-fancier, Au- 
rora’s pensioner, the man who had traded 
upon her secret, and made himself the 
last link between herself and the low-born 
husband she had abandoned. 

Samuel Prodder lifted himself from 
the Windsor chairs at this juncture. He 
was too much interested in the conversa- 
tion to be able to simulate sleep any 
longer. He got up, stretched his legs 
and arms, made elaborate show of having 
just awakened from a profound and re- 
freshing slumber, and asked the landlord 
of the “ Crooked Rabbit” to mix him 
another glass of that pine-apple-rurn 
grog. 

The captain lighted his pipe while his 
host departed upon this errand. The 
seaman glanced rather inquisitively at 
Mr. liarrison ; but he was fain to wait 
until the conversation took its own 
course, and offered him a safe opportu- 
nity of asking a few questions. 

“ The pecooliar circumstances under 
which I know’d James Conyers,” j)ur- 
sued the' dog-fancier, after having taken 
his own time and smoked out half a pipe- 
ful of tobacco, to the acute aggravation 
of his auditory, “ was a woman, — and a 
stunner she was, too ; one of your regu- 
lar spitfires, that’ll knock you into the 
middle of next week if you so much as 
asks her how she does in a manner she 
don’t approve of. She was a woman, she 


230 


AUEOEA PLOTD. 


was, and a handsome one too ; but she 
was more than a match for James, with 
all his brass. Why, I’ve seen her great 
black eyes flash Are upon him,” said Mr. 
Harrison, looking dreamily before him, 
as if he could even at that moment see 
the flashing eyes of which he spoke; 
“I’ve seen her look at him as if she’d 
wither him up from off the ground he 
trod upon with that contempt she felt 
for him.” 

Samuel Prodder grew strangely un- 
easy as he listened to this man’s talk of 
flashing black eyes and angry looks di- 
rected at James Conyers. Had he not 
seen his niece’s shining orbs flame fire 
upon the dead man only a quarter of an 
hour before he received his death-wound? 
Only so long. Heaven help that wretched 
girl ! — only so long before the man for 
whom she had expressed unmitigated 
hate had fallen by the hand of an un- 
known murderer. 

“ She must have been a tartar, this 
young woman, of yours,” the landlord 
observed to Mr. Harrison. 

“ She was a tartar,” answered the 
dog-fancier ; “ but she was the right 
sort, too, for all that; and what’s more, 
she was a kind friend to me. There’s 
never a quarter day goes by that I don’t 
have cause to s^y so.” 

He poured but a fresh glass of beer 
as he spoke, and tossed the liquor down 
his capacious throat with the muttered 
sentiment,' “ Here’s towards her.” 

Another man had entered the room 
while Mr. Prodder had sat smoking his 
pipe and drinking his rum-and-water, 
a hump-backed, white-faced man, who 
sneaked into the public-house parlor as 
if he had no right to be there, and 
seated himself noiselessly at one of the 
tables. 

Samuel Prodder remembered this man. 
He had seen him through the window in 
the lighted parlor of the north lodge 
when the body of James Conyers had 
been carried into the cottage. It was 
not likely, however, that the man had 
seen the captain. 

“ Why, if it isn’t Steeve Hargraves 
from the Park !” exclaimed the landlord, 
as he looked round and recognized the 
Softy; “he’ll be able to tell plenty, I 
dare say. We’ve been talking of the 
murder, Steeve,” he added, in a concilia- 
tory manner. 


Mr. Hargraves rubbed his clumsy 
hands about his head, and looked fur- 
tively, yet searchingly, at each member 
of the little assembly, 

“ Ay, sure,” he said, “ folks don’t seem 
to me to talk about aught else. It was 
bad enough up at the Park; but it 
seems worse in Doncaster.” 

“ Are you stayin’ up town, Steeve ?” 
asked the landlord, who seemed to be 
upon pretty intimate terms with the late 
hanger-on of Mellish Park. ^ 

“Yes, I’m stayin’ oop town for a bit ; 
I’ve been out of place since the business 
oop there ; you know how I was turned 
out of the house that had sheltered me 
ever since I was a boy, and you know 
who did it. Never mind that ; I’m out 
o’ place now, but you may draw me a 
mug of ale ; I’ve money enough for 
that.” 

Samuel Puodder looked at the Softy 
with considerable interest. He had 
played a small part in the great catfis- 
trophe, yet it was scarcely likely that he 
should be able to throw any light upon 
the mystery. What was he but a poor, 
half-witted hanger-on of the murdered 
man, who had lost all by his patron’s 
untimely death? 

The Softy drank his beer, and sat, 
silent, ungainly, and disagreeable to look 
upon, amongst the other men. 

“ There’s a reg’lar stir in the Manches- 
ter papers about this murder, Steeve,” 
the landlord said, by way of opening a 
conversation ; “ it don’t seem to me as 
if the business was goiii’ to be let drop 
over quietly. There’ll be a second in- 
quest, I reckon, or a examination, or a 
memorial to the Secretary of State, or 
summat o’ that sort, before long.” 

The Softy’s face, expressionless almost 
always, expressed nothing now but stolid 
indifference ; the stupid indifference of a 
half-witted ignoramus, to whose impene- 
trable intellect even the murder of hie 
own master was a far-away and obscure 
event, not powerful enough to awaken 
any effort of attention. 

“Yes; I’ll lay there’ll be a stir about 
it before Jong,” the landlord continued. 
“ The papers put it down very strong 
that the murder must have been done by 
some one in the house; by some one as 
had more knowledge of the man, and 
more reason to be angry against him, 
than strangers could have. Now you, 


AURORA FLOYD. 


231 


Hargraves, were living at the place; 
you must have seen and heard things 
that other people haven’t had the oppor- 
tunity to hear. What do you think 
about it 

Mr. Hargraves scratched his head re- 
flectively. 

“The papers are cleverer nor me,” he 
said at last ; “ it wouldn’t do for a poor 
fond clnfp like me to go again’ such as 
them. I think what they think. I think 
it was some one about the, place did it; 
some one that had good reason to be 
spiteful against him that’s dead.” 

An imperceptible shudder passed over 
the Softy’s frame as he alluded to the 
murdered man. It was strange with 
what gusto the other three men discussed 
the ghastly subject ; returning to it 
persistently in spite of every interrup- 
tion, and in a manner licking their lips 
over its gloomiest details. ,It was surely 
more strange that they should do this, 
than that Stephen Hargraves should ex- 
hibit some reluctance to talk freely upon 
the dismal topic. 

“ And who do you think had cause to 
bo spiteful agen him, Steeve ?” asked the 
landlord. “ Had him and Mr. Mellish 
fell out about the management of the 
stable ?” 

“ Him and Mr. Mellish had never had 
au angry word pass between ’em, as I’ve 
heerd of,” answered the Softy. 

He laid such a singular emphasis upon 
the word Mr. that the three men looked 
at him wonderingly, and Captain Prod- 
der took his pipe from his mouth and 
grasped the back of a neighboring chair 
as firmly as if he had entertained serious 
thoughts of flinging that trifle of furni- 
ture at the Softy’s head. 

“Who else could it have been, then, 
as had a spite against the man ?” asked 
gome one. 

Samuel Prodder scarcely knew who it 
was who ’spoke, for his attention was 
concentrated upon Stephen Hargraves ; 
and he never once removed his gaze 
from the white face, and dull, blinking 
eyes. 

“ Who was it that went to meet him 
late at night in the north lodge ?” whis- 
pere<l the Softy. “Who was it that 
couldn’t find words that was bad enough 
for him, or looks that was angry enough 
for him ? • Who was it that wrote him 
a letter, — I’ve got it, and I mean to keep 


it too, — askin’ of him to be in the wood 
at such-and-such a time upon the very 
night of the murder ? Who was it that 
met him there in the dark, — as others 
could tell as well as me ? Who was it 
that did this ?” 

No one answered. The men looked 
at each other and at the Softy with open 
mouths, but said nothing. Sanwiel Prod- 
der grasped the topmost bar of the 
wooden chair still more tightly, and his 
broad Hbsom rose and fell beneath his 
tourist waistcoat like a raging sea; but 
he sat in the shadow of the cpieerly- 
shaped room, and no one noticed him. 

“ Who was it that ran away from her 
own home and hid herself, after the in- 
quest ?” whispered the Softy. Who 
was it that was afraid to stop in her own 
house, but must run away to London 
without leaving word where she was 
gone for any body ? Who was it that 
was seen upon the raornin’ before the 
murder meddlin’ with her husband’s guns 
and pistols, and was seen by more than 
me, as them that saw her will testify 
when the time comes? Who was this?” 

Again there was no answer. The 
raging sea labored still more heavily un- 
der Captain Prodder’s waistcoat, and 
his grasp tightened, if it could tighten, 
on the rail of the chair; but he uttered 
no word. There was more to come, 
perhaps, yet; and he might want every 
chair in the room as instruments with 
which to appease his vengeance. 

“ You was talkin’, when I just came 
in, a while ago, of a young woman in 
connexion with Mr. James Conyers, sir,” 
said the Softy, turning to Matthew Har- 
rison ; “ a black-eyed woman, you said ; 
might she have been his wife ?” 

The dog-fancier started, and delibe-v 
rated for a few moments before he an- 
swered. 

“Well, in a manner of speaking, she 
was his wife,” he said at last, rather 
reluctantly. 

“ She was* a bit above him, loike, 
wasn’t she ?” asked the Softy. “ She 
had more money than she knew what to 
do with, eh ?” 

The dog-fancier stared at the ques- 
tioner. 

“You know who she was, I sup- 
pose ?” he said suspiciously. 

“ I think I do,” whispered Stephen 
Hargraves. “ She was the daughter of 


232 


AURORA FLOYD. 


Mr. Floyd, the rich banker oop in Lon- 
don ; and she married James Conyers, 
and she got tired of him ; and she mar- 
ried oiir squire while her first husband 
was alive; and she wrote a letter to him 
that’s dead, askin’ of him to meet her 
upon the night of the murder.” 

Captain Prodder flung aside the chair. 
It was too* poor a weapon with which to 
wreak his wrath, and with one bound he 
sprang upon the Softy, seizingj^he as- 
tonished wretch by the throat, and over- 
turning a table, with a heap of crashing 
glasses and pewter pots, that rolled away 
into the corners of the room. 

“It’s a lie!” roared the sailor, “you 
foul-mouthed hound I you know that it’s 
a lie ! Give me something,” cried Cap- 
tain Prodder; “give me something, 
somebody, and give it quick, that I may 
pound this man into a mash as soft as a 
soaked ship’s biscuit; for if I use my 
fists to him I shall murder him, as sure 
as I stand here. It’s my sister Eliza’s 
child you want to slander, is it? You’d 
better have kept your mouth shut while 
you was in her own uncle’s company. 
I meant to have kep’ quiet here,” cried 
the captain, with a vague recollection 
that he had betrayed himself and his 
purpose; “ but was I to keep quiet and 
iiear lies told of my own niece ? Take 
care,” he added, shaking the Softy, till 
Mr. Hargraves’ teeth chattered in his 
head, “ or I’ll knock those crooked teeth 
of yours down your ugly throat, to hin- 
der you from telling any more lies of my 
dead sister’s only child.” 

“ They weren’t lies,” gasped the 
Softy doggedly; “I said I’d got the 
letter, aiid I have got it. Let me go, 
and I’ll show it to you.” 

The sailor released the dirty wisp of 
cotton neckerchief by which he had held 
Stephen Hargraves ; but he still re- 
tained a grasp upon his coat-collar. 

“Shall I show you the letter?” asked 
the Softy. 

“ Yes.” 

Mr. Hargrave fumbled in his pockets 
for some minutes, and ultimately pro- 
duced a dirty scrap of crumpled paper. 

It was the brief scrawl which Aurora 
had written to James Conyers, telling 
him to meet her in the wood. The 
murdered man had thrown it carelessly 
aside after reading it, and it had been 
picked up by Stephen Hargraves. 


He would not trust the precious do- 
cument out of his own clumsy hands, 
but held it before Captain Prodder for 
inspection. 

The sailor stared at it, anxious, be- 
wildered, fearful ; he scarcely knew how 
to estimate the importance of the 
wretched scrap of circumstantial evi- 
dence. There were the words, cer- 
tainly, written in a bold, scarcely femi- 
nine, hand. But these words in them- 
selves proved* nothing until it could be 
proved that his niece had written them. 

“ How do I know as my sister’s child 
wrote that?” he asked. 

“ Ay, sure ; but she did though,” an- 
swered the Softy. “ But, coom, let me 
go now, will you ?” he added, with 
cringing civility ; “ I didn’t know yon 
was her uncle. How was I to know 
aught about it? I don’t want to make 
any mischief agen Mrs. Mellish, though 
she’s been no friend to me. I didn’t 
say any thing at the inquest, did I ? 
though I might have said as much as 
I’ve said to-night, if it comes to that, 
and have told no lies. But when folks 
bother me about him that’s dead, and 
ask this and that and t’other, and go on 
as if I had a right to know all about it, 
I’m free to tell my thoughts, I suppose; 
surely I’m free to tell my thoughts ?” 

“ I’ll go straight to Mr. Mellish, and 
tell him what you’ve said, you scoun- 
drel I” cried the captain. 

“ Ay, do,” wdiispered Stephen Har- 
graves maliciously; “there’s some of it 
that’ll be stale news to him, any how.” 


CHAPTER XXXIY. 

THE DISCOVERY OF THE WEAPON WITH 
WHICH JAMES CONYERS HAD BEEN 
SLAIN. 

Mr. and Mrs. Mellish returned to the 
house in which they had been so happy ; 
but it is not to be supposed that the 
pleasant country mansion could be again, 
all in a moment, the home that it had 
been before the advent of James Con- 
yers, the trainer, and the tragedy that 
had so abruptly concluded his brief 
service. 

No ; every pang that Aurora had felt, 


AURORA FLOYD. 


every agony that John had endured, had 
left a certain impress upon the scene in 
which it had been suffered. The subtle 
influences of association hung heavily 
about the familiar yilace. We are the 
slaves of such associations, and we are 
powerless to stand against their silent 
force. Scraps of color and patches of 
gilding upon the walls will bear upon 
them, as plainly as if they were covered 
with hieroglyphical inscriptions, the sha- 
dows of the thoughts of those who have 
looked upon them. Transient and chance 
eflects of light or shade will recall the 
same effects, seen and observed — as Fa- 
gin observed the broken spike upon the 
guarded dock — in some horrible crisis 
of misery and despair. The commonest 
household goods and chattels will bear 
mute witness of your agonies ; an easy- 
chair will say to you, “It was upon me 
you cast yourself in that paroxysm of 
rage and grief;” the pattern of a dinner- 
service may recall to you that fatal day 
on which you pushed your food untasted 
from yon, and turned your face, like 
grief-stricken King David, to the wall. 
The bed you lay upon, the curtains that 
sheltered you, the pattern of the paper 
on the walls, the common every-day 
sounds of the household, coming muffled 
and far away to that lonely room in 
which you hid yourself, — all these bear 
record of your sorrow, and of that hide* 
ous double action of the mind which im- 
presses these things most vividly upon 
you at the very time when it would seem 
they should be most indifferent. 

But every sorrow, every pang of 
w'ounded love, or doubt, or jealousy, or 
despair, is a fact — a fact once, and a 
fact for ever ; to be outlived, but very 
rarely to be forgotten ; leaving such an 
impress upon our lives as no future joys 
can quite wear out. The murder has 
been done, and the hands are red. The 
sorrow has been suffered ; and however 
beautiful Happiness may be to us, she 
can never be the bright virginal creature 
she once w'as ; for she has passed through 
the valley of the shadow of death, ^nd we 
have discovered that she is not immortal. 

It is not to be expected, then, that 
John Mellish and his wife Aurora could 
feel quite the same in the pretty cham- 
bers of the Yorkshire mansion as they 
had felt before tlie first shipwreck of 
their happiness. They had been saved 


233 

from peril and destruction, and landed, 
by the mercy of Providence, high and 
dry upon a shore that seemed to promise 
them y)leasure and security henceforth. 
But the memory of the tempest was yet 
new to them ; and upon the sands that 
were so smooth to-day they had seen 
yesterday the breakers beating with furi- 
ous menace, arid hurrying onward to de- 
stroy them. 

The funeral of the trainer had not yet 
taken place, and it was scarcely a pleas- 
ant thing l^or Mr. Mellish to remember 
that the body of the murdered man still 
lay, stark and awful, in the oak-coffin 
that stood upon trestles in the rustic 
chamber at the north lodge. 

“I’ll pull that place down, Lolly,” 
John said, as he turned away from an 
open window, through which he could 
see the Gothic chimneys of the trainer’s 
late habitation glimmering redly above 
the trees. “ I’ll pull the place down, my 
pet. The gates are never used, except 
by the stable-boys ; I’ll knock them 
down, and the lodge too, and build some 
loose boxes for the brood-mares with the 
materials. And we’ll go away to the 
south of France, darling, and run across 
to Italy, if you like, and forget all about 
this horrid business.” 

“The funeral will take place to-mor- 
row, John, will it not?” Aurora asked. 

“To-morrow, dear! — to-morrow is 
Wednesday, you know. It was upon 
Thursday night that — ” 

“ Yes, yes,” she answered, interrupting 
him. “1 know ; I remember.” 

She shuddered as she spoke, remem- 
bering the ghastly circumstances of the 
night to which he alluded ; remembering 
how the dead man had stood before her, 
strong, in health and vitality, and had 
insolently defied her hatred. Away from 
Mellish Park, she had only remembered 
that the burden of her life had been re- 
moved from her, and that she was free. 
But here — here upon the scene of the 
hideous story* — she recollected the man- 
ner of her release ; and that memory 
oppressed her even more terribly than 
her old secret, her only sorrow. 

She had never seen or known in this 
man, who had been murdered, one re- 
deeming quality, one generous thought. 
She had known him as a liar, a schemer, 
a low and paltry swindler, a selfish 
spendthrift, extravagant to wantouness 


234 


AURORA FLOYD. 


upon himself, but meaner than words 
could tell towards others, a proflip:ate, a 
traitor, a glutton, a drunkard. This is 
what she had found behind her school- 
girl’s fancy for a handsome face, for 
violet-tinted eyes, and soft-brown curling 
hair. Do not call her hard, then, if 
sorrow had no part in the shuddering 
horror she- felt as she coiijnred up the 
image of .him in his death-hour, and saw 
the glazing eyes turned angrily upon 
her. She was little more than twenty ; 
and it had been her fate always to take 
the wrong step, always to be misled by 
the vague finger-posts upon life’s high 
road, and to choose the longest, and 
crookedest, and hardest ways towards the 
goal she sought to reach. 

Had she, upon the discovery of the 
first husband’s infidelity, called the law 
to her aid — she was rich enough to com- 
mand its utmost help, though Sir Cress- 
well Cresswell did not then keep the 
turnpike upon such a royal road to di- 
vorce as he does now, — she might have 
freed herself from the hateful chains so 
foolishly linked together, and might have 
defied this dead man to torment or assail 
her. 

But she had chosen to follow the 
counsel of expediency, and it had led 
her upon the crooked way through 
which I have striven to follow her. 
I feel that there is much need of apo- 
logy for her. Her own hands had sown 
the dragon’s teeth, from whose evil seed 
had sprung up armed men, strong enougli 
to rend and devour her. But then, if 
she had been faultless, she could not 
have been the. heroine of this story ; for 
I think some wise man of old remarked, 
that the perfect women were those who 
left no histories behind them, but went 
through life upon such a tranquil course 
of quiet well-doing as left no footprints 
on the sands of time; only mute records 
hidden here and there, deep in the grate- 
ful hearts of those who had been blessed 
by them. 

The presence of the dead man within 
the boundary of Mellish Park made 
itself felt throughout the household, that 
had once been such a jovial one. The 
excitement of the catastrophe had passed 
away, and only the dull gloom remained — 
a sense of oppression not to be cast aside. 
It was felt in the servants’ hall, as well 
as in Aurora’s luxurious apartments. 


It was felt by the butler as well as by 
the master. No worse deed of violence 
than the slaughter of an unhappy stag, 
who had rushed for a last refuge to the 
Mellish flower-garden, and had been 
run down by furious hounds upon the 
velvet lawn, had ever before been done 
within the boundary of the young squire’s 
home. The house was an old.one, and. 
had stood, gray and ivy -shrouded, 
through the perilous days of civil war. 
There . were secret passages, in which 
loyal sqmrev, of Mellish had hidden from 
ferocious Boundheads bent upon riot 
ana pmnder. There were broad hearth- 
stones, upon which sturdy blows had 
been given and exchanged by strong 
men in leathern jerkins and clumsy iron- 
heeled boots ; but the Iloyalist Mellish 
had always ultimately escaped, — up a 
chimney, or down a cellar, or behind a 
curtain of taj>estry ; and tho wicked 
Praise-the-Lord Thompsons, and Smiter- 
of-the-Philistines Joneses had departed 
after plundering the plate -chest and 
emptying the wine-barrels. There had 
never before been set upon the place in 
which John Mellish had first seen the 
light, the red hand of Murder. 

It was not strange, thetq that the 
servants sat long over their meals, and 
talked in solemn whispers of the events 
of the past week. There was more than 
the murder to talk about. There was 
the flight of Mrs. Mellish from beneath 
her husband’s roof upon the very day 
of the inquest. It was all very well for 
John to give out that his wife had gone 
up to town upon a visit to her cousin, 
Mrs. Bui strode. Such ladies as Mrs. 
Mellish do not go upon visits without 
escort, without a word of notice, with- 
out the po.orest pretence of bag and 
baggage. No ; the mistress of Mellish 
Park had fled away from her home un- 
der the influence of some sudden ])anic. 
Had not Mrs. Powell said as much, or 
hinted as much? for when did that lady 
like creature ever vulgarise her opinions 
by stating them plainly ? The matter 
was o[)vious. Mr. Mellish had taken, 
no doubt, the wisest course : he had 
pursued his wife and had brought hei 
back, and had done his best to hush up 
the matter; but Aurora’s departure had 
been a flight, — a sudden and unpremedi- 
tated flight. 

The lady’s-maid, — ah, how many 


AUKORA FLOYD. 


235 


handsome dresses, given to her by a 
generous mistress, lay neatly folded in 
the girl’s boxes on the second story 1 — 
told how Aurora had come to her room, 
pale and wild-looking, and had dressed 
herself unassisted for that hurried jour- 
uey, upon the day of the inquest. The 
girl liked her misfl’ess, loved her, per- 
haps ; for Aurora had a w'ondrous and 
almost dangerous faculty for winning 
the love of those who came near her ; 
but it was so pleasant to have something 
to say about this all-absorbing topic, 
and to be able to make oneself a feature 
ill the solemn conclave, At first they 
had talked only of the murdered man, 
speculating upon his life and history, 
and building up a dozen theoretical 
views of the murder. But the tide had 
turned now, and they talked of their 
mistress ; not connecting her in any po- 
sitive or openly-expressed manner with 
the murder, but commenting upon the 
strangeness of her conduct, and dwelling 
much upon those singular coincidences 
by which she had happened to be roam- 
ing in the park upon the night of the 
catastrophe, and to run away from her 
home on the day of the inquest. 

“ It loan odd, you know,” the cook 
said; “and them black-eyed women are 
generally regular spirity ones, /shouldn’t 
like to otfend Master John’s wife. Do 
you remember how she paid into t’ 
Softy ?” 

“ But there was naught o’ sort be- 
tween her and the trainer, was there ?” 
asked some one. 

“ I don’t know about that. But Softy 
said she hated him like poison, and that 
there w.as no love lost between ’em.” 

But why should Aurora have hated 
the dead man ? , The ensign’s widow 
had left the sting of her venom behind 
her, and had suggested to these servants, 
by hints and inuendos, something so far 
more base and hideous than the truth, 
that I will not sully these pages by re- 
cording it. But Mrs. Powell had of 
course done this foul thing without the 
utterance of one ugly word that could 
have told against her gentility, had it 
been repeated aloud in a crowded draw- 
ing-room. She had only shrugged her 
shoulders, and lifted her straw-colored 
eyebrows, and sighed half- regretfully, 
half-deprecatingly ; but she had blasted 
tlie character of the woman she hated as 


.shamefully as if she had uttered a libel 
too gross for Holywell Street. She 
had done a wrong that could only be 
undone by the exhibition of the blood- 
stained certificate in John’s keeping, 
and the revelation of the whole story 
connected with that fatal scrap of paper. 
She had done this before packing her 
boxes; and she had gone away from 
the house that had sheltered J)er, well- 
pleased at having done this wrong; and 
comforting herself yet further by the in- 
tention of doing more mischief through 
the medium of the pe’nny post. 

It is not to be supposed that the 
Manchester paper, which had caused so 
serious a discussion in the humble parlor 
of the “ Crooked Rabbit,” had been 
overlooked in the servants’ hall at Mel- 
lish. The Manchester journals were re- 
gularly forwarded to the young squire 
from that metropolis of cotton-spinning 
and horse-racing; and the mysterious 
letter in the Guardian had been read 
and commented upon. Every creature 
in that household, from the fat house- 
keeper, who had kept the keys of the 
store-room through nearly three gene- 
rations, to the rheumatic trainer, Lang- 
ley, had a certain interest in the awful 
question. A nervous footman turned 
pale as that passage was read which de- 
clared that the murder had been com- 
mitted by some member of the house- 
hold ; but I think there were some 
younger and more adventurous spirits — 
especially a ))retty housemaid, who had 
see!i the thrilling drama of Suaan Hop- 
ley performed at the Doncaster theatre 
during the spring meeting — who would 
have rather liked to be accused of the 
crime, and to emerge spotless and tri- 
umphant from the judicial ordeal, 
through the evidence of an idiot, or a 
magpie, or a ghost, or some other wit- 
ness common and popular in criminal 
courts. 

Did Aurora know any thing of all 
this? No; she only knew that a dull 
and heavy sense of oppression in her 
own breast made the very summer atmos- 
phere floating in at the open windows 
seem stifling and poisonous ; that the 
liouse, which had once been so dear to 
her, was as painfully and perpetually 
haunted by the ghastly presence of the 
murdered man, as if the dead trainer had 
stalked palpably about the corridors 


236 


AURORA FLOYD. 


wrapped in a blood-stained winding- 
sheet. 

She dined with her husband alone in 
the great dining-room. Many people 
had called during the two days that Mr. 
and Mrs. Mellish had been absent; 
amongst others, the rector, Mr. Loft- 
house, and the coroner, Mr. Hayward. 

“ Lofthouse and Hayward will guess 
why we .went away,” John thought, as 
he tossed the cards over in the basket ; 
“they will guess that I have taken the 
proper steps to make mv^marriage legal, 
and to make my darling quite my own.” 

They were very silent at dinner, for 
the presence of the servants sealed their 
lips upon the topic that was uppermost 
in tlieir minds. John looked anxiously 
at his wife every now and then, for he 
saw that her face had grown paler since 
her arrival at Mellish ; but he waited 
until they were alone before he spoke. 

“ aVIy darling,” he said, as the door 
closed behind the butler and his subor- 
dinate, “I am sure you are ill. This 
business has been too much for you.” 

“It is the air of this house that seems 
to 0})press me, John,” answered Aurora. 
“I had forgotten all about this dreadful 
business while I was away. Now that 
I come back, and find that the time which 
has been so long to me — so long in mis- 
ery and anxiety, so long in joy, my own 
dear love, through you — is in reality only 
a few days, and that the murdered man 
still lies near us, I — I shall be better 
when — when the funeral is over, John.” 

“ My poor darling, I was a fool to 
bring you back. I should never have 
done so, but for Talbot’s advice. He 
urged me so strongly to come back di- 
rectly. He said that if there should be 
any disturbance about the murder, we 
ought to be upon the spot.” 

“ Disturbance I What disturbance ?” 
cried Aurora. 

Her face blanched as she spoke, and 
her heart sank within her. What fur- 
ther disturbance could there be ? Was 
the ghastly business as yet unfinished, 
tlien ? She knew — alas, only too well — 
that there could be no investigation of 
this matter which would not bring her 
name before the world linked with the 
name of the dead man. How much she 
had endured in order to keep that shame- 
ful secret from the world ! How much 
she had sacrificed iu the hope of saving 


her father from humiliation ! And now, 
at the last', when she had thought that 
the dark chapter of her life was finished, 
the hateful page blotted out, — now, at 
the very last, there was a probability of 
some new disturbance which would bring 
her name and her history into every 
newspaper in England. 

“Oh, John, John!” she cried, burst- 
ing into a passion of hysterical sobs, and 
covering her face with her clasped hands; 
“am I never tq^hear the last of this? 
Am I never, never, never to be released 
from the consequences of my miserabla 
folly?” 

The butler entered the room as she 
said this ; she rose hurriedly, and walked 
to one of the windows, in order to con- 
ceal her face from the man. 

“ I beg your pardon, sir,” the old ser- 
vant said ; “ but they’ve found something 
in the park, and I thought perhaps yon 
might like to know — ” 

“They’ve found something ? What ?” 
exclaimed John, utterly bewildered be- 
tween his agitation at the sight of his 
wife’s grief and his endeavor to under- 
stand the man. 

“A pistol, sir. One of the stable-lads 
found it just now. He went to the wood 
with another boy to look at the place 
where — the — the man was shot; and he’s 
brought back a pistol he found there. 
It was close against the water, but hid 
away among the weeds and rushes. Who- 
ever threw it there, thought, no doubt, t« 
throw it in the pond ; but Jim, that’s 
one of the boys, fancied he saw' some- 
thing glitter, and sure enough it was the 
band of a pistol ; and I think it must be 
tile one the trainer w’as shot with, Mr, 
John.” 

“A pistol I” cried Mr. Mellish; “let 
me see it.” 

His servant handed him the weapon. 
It was small enough for a toy, but none 
the less deadly in a skilful hand. It wag 
a rich man’s fancy, deftly carried out by 
some cunning gunsmith, and enriched by 
elaborate inlaid work of purjde steel and 
tarnished silver. It was rusty, from ex- 
jiosure to rain and dew; but Mr. Mel- 
lish knew the pistol well, for it was hig 
own. 

It was his own ; one of his pet play- 
things; and it had been kept in the room 
which was only entered by jirivileged 
persons, — the room in which his wife had 


AURORA FLOYD. 


237 


busied herself upon the day of the mur- 
der with the rearrangement of his guns. 


CHADTER XXXY. 

UNDER A CLOUD. 

Talbot Bulstrode and his wife came 
to Mellish Park a few days after the re- 
turn of John and Aurora. Lucy was 
pleased to come to her cousin ; pleased 
to be allowed to love her without re- 
servation ; grateful to her husband for 
his gracious goodness in setting no bar- 
rier between her and the friend she loved. 

And Talbot, — who shall tell the 
thoughts that were busy in his mind, as 
he sat in a corner of the first-class car- 
riage, to all outward appearance en- 
grossed in the perusal of a. Times leader ? 

I wonder how much of the Tliunder- 
er’s noble Saxon English Mr. Bulstrode 
comprehended that morning ? The broad 
white paper on which the Times is printed 
serves as a convenient screen for a man’s 
face. Heaven knows what agonies have 
been sometimes endured behind that 
printed mask. A woman, married, and a 
happy mother,- glances carelessly enough 
at the Births and Marriages and Deaths, 
and reads perhaps that the man she 
loved, and parted with, and broke her 
heart 'for, fifteen or twenty years before, 
has fallen, .shot through the heart, far 
away upon an Indian battle-field. She 
holds the paper firmly enough before her 
face ; and her husband goes on with his 
breakfast, and stirs his coffee, or breaks 
his egg, while she suffers her agony, — 
while the comfortable breakfast-table 
darkens and goes away from her, and the 
long-ago day comes back upon which the 
cruel ship left Southampton, and the hard 
voices of well-meaning friends held forth 
monotonously upon the folly of improvi- 
dent marriages. Would it not be better, 
by the by, for wives to make a practice 
of telling their husbands all the senti- 
mental little stories connected with the 
pre-matrimonial era ? Would it not be 
wiser to gossip freely about Charles’s 
dark eyes and moustache, and to hope 
that the poor fellow is getting on well 
in the Indian service, than to keep a 
skeleton, in the shape of a phantom en- 


sign in the 8Ith, hidden away in some 
dark chamber of the feminine memory ? 

But other than womanly agonies are 
suffered behind the Times. The husband 
reads bad news of the railway company 
in whose shares he has so rashly invested 
that money which his wife believes safely 
lodged in the jog-trot, three-per-cent- 
yielding Consols. The dashing son, with 
New-market tendencies, reads evil ti- 
dings of the horse he has backed so 
boldly, perhaps at" the advice of a Man- 
chester prophet, who warranted putting 
his friends in the way of winning a hat- 
ful of money for the small consideration 
of three-and-sixpence in postage-stamps. 
Visions of a wall that it will not be very 
easy to square ; of a black list of play or 
pay engagements ; of a crowd of angry 
bookmen clamorous for their dues, and 
not slow to hint at handy horse-ponds, 
and possible tar and feathers, for de- 
faulting swells and sneaking welshers; — 
all these things flit across the disorgan- 
ised brain of the young man, while his 
sisters are entreating to be told whether 
the Crown Diamonds is to be performed 
that night, and if “ dear Miss Pyne” will 
warble Rhode’s air before the curtain 
falls. The friendly screen hides his face ; 
and by the time he haslooked for the Co- 
vent Garden advertisements, and given 
the required information, he is able to 
set the paper down and proceed calmly 
with his breakfast, pondering ways and 
means as he does so. 

Lucy Bulstrode read a Iligh-Church 
novel, while her husband sat with the 
Times before his face, thinking of all 
that had happened to him since he had 
first met the banker’s daughter. How 
far away that old love-story seemed to 
have receded since the quiet domestic 
happiness of his life had begun in his 
marriage with Lucy ! He had never 
been false, in the remotest shadow of a 
thought, to his second love ; but now 
that he knew the secret of Aurora’s life, 
he could but look back and wonder how 
he should have borne that cruel revela- 
tion if John’s fate had been his ; if he 
had trusted the woman he loved in spite 
of the world, in spite of her own strange 
words, which had so terribly strengthened 
his worst fear, so cruelly redoubled his 
darkest doubts. 

“ Poor girl 1” he thought ; “ it was 
scarcely strange that she should shrink 


238 


AURORA FLOYD. 


from telling: that humiliating story. I 
was not tender enough. I confronted 
her in my obstinate and pitiless pride. 
I thought of myself rather than of her, 
and of her sorrow. I was barbarous and 
ungentlemanly ; and then I wondered 
that she refused to confide in me.” 

Talbot Bulstrode, reasoning after the 
fact, saw the weak points of his conduct 
with a preternatural clearness of vision, 
and could not repress a sharp pang 
of regret that he had not acted more 
generously. There was«no infidelity to 
Lucy in this thought. He would not 
have exchanged his devoted little wife 
for the black-browed divinity of the past, 
though an all-powerful fairy had stood 
at his side ready to cancel his nuptials 
and tie a fresh knot between him and 
Aurora. But he was a gentleman, and 
he felt that he had grievously wronged, 
insulted, and huniiliated a woman whose 
worst fault had been the trusting folly 
of an innocent girl. 

“ I left her on the ground in that room 
at Felden,” he thought, — “kneeling on 
the ground, with her beautiful head 
bowed down before me. 0 my God, 
can I ever forget the agony of that mo- 
ment ? Can I ever forget what it cost 
me to do what I thought was right ?” 

Tlie cold perspiration broke out upon 
his forehead as he remembered that by- 
gone pain, as it may do with a cowardly 
person who recalls too vividly the taking 
out of a three-pronged double tooth, or 
the cutting olf of a limb. 

“John Mellish was ten times wiser 
than I,’’ thought Mr. Bulstrode; “he 
trusted to his instinct, and recognised a 
true woman when he met her. I used to 
despise him at Rugby because he couldn’t 
construe Cicero. I never thought he’d 
live to be wiser than me.” 

Talbot Bulstrode folded the Times 
newspaper, and laid it down in the empty 
seat by his side. Lucy shut the third 
volume of her novel. How should she 
care to read when it pleased her hus- 
band to desist from reading ? 

“ Lucy,” said Mr. Bulstrode, taking 
his wife’s hand (they had the carriage to 
themselves, a piece of good fortune which 
often happens to travellers who give the 
guard half-a-crown), — “Lucy, I once did 
your cousin a great wrong ; I want to 
atone for it now. If any trouble, which 


no one yet foresees, should come upon 
her, I want to be her friend. Ho you 
think I am right in wishing this, dear?” 

“ Right, Talbot I” 

Mrs. Bulstrode could only repeat the 
word in unmitigated surprise. When 
did she ever think him any thing but the 
truest and wisest and most perfect of 
created beings ? 

Every thing seemed very quiet at Mel- 
lish when the visitors arrived. There 
was no one in the drawing-room, nor in 
the smaller room within the drawing- 
room ; the Venetians were closed, for the 
day was close and sultry; there were 
vases of fresh flowers upon the tables ; 
but there were no open books, no litter 
of frivolous needlework or drawing- 
materials, to indicate Aurora’s presence. 

“ Mr. and Mrs. Mellish expected yon 
by the later train, I believe, sir|” the 
servant said, as he ushered Talbot and 
his wife into the drawing-room. 

“ Shall I go and look for Aurora ?” 
Lucy said to her husband. “ She is in 
the morning-room, I dare say.” 

Talbot suggested that it would be bet- 
ter, perhaps, to wait till Mrs. Mellish 
came to them. So Lucy was fain to re- 
main where she was. She w^ent to one 
of the open windows, and pushed the 
shutters apart. The blaming sunshine 
burst into the room, and drowned it in 
light. The smooth lawn was aflame 
with scarlet geraniums and standard 
roses, and all manner of gaudily-coloured 
blossoms ; but Mrs. Bulstrode looked 
beyond this vividly-tinted parterre to 
the thick woods, that loomed darkly 
purple against the glowing sky. 

It was in that very wood that her hus- 
band had declared his love for her ; the 
same wood that had since been outraged 
by violence and murder. 

“ The — the man is buried, I suppose, 
Talbot ?” she said to her husband. 

“ I believe so, my dear.” 

“ I should never care to live in this 
place again, if I were Aurora.” 

The door opened before Mrs. Bul- 
strode had finished speaking, and the 
mistress of the house came towards them. 
She welcomed them affectionately and 
kindly, taking Lucy in her arms, and 
greeting her very tenderly ; but Talbot 
saw that she had changed terribly within 
the few days that had passed since her 


AURORA FLOYD. 


239 


return to Yorlvshire, and his heart sank 
as he observed her pale face and the dark 
circles about her hollow eyes. 

Could she have heard — ? Could any 
body have given her reason to sup- 
pose — ? 

“You are not well, Mrs. Mellish,” he 
said, as he took her hand. 

“ No, not very well. This oppressive 
weather makes my head ache.” 

“ I am sorry to see you looking ill. 
Where shall 1 find John ?” asked Mr. 
Bulstrode. 

Aurora’s pale face flushed suddenly. 

“ I — I — don’t know,” she stammered. 
“ He is not in the house ; he has gone 
out — to the stables — or to the farm, I 
think. I’ll send for him.” 

“No, no,” Talbot said, intercepting 
her hand on its way to the bell. “ I’ll 
go and look for him. Lucy will be glad 
of a chat with you, I dare say, Aurora, 
and will not be sorry to get rid of 
me.” 

Lucy, with her arm about her cousin’s 
waist, assented to this arrangement. She 
was grieved to see the change in Aurora’s 
looks, the unnatural constraint of her 
manner. 

Mr. Bulstrode walked away, hugging 
himself upon having done a very wise 
thing. 

“ Lucy is a great deal more likely to 
find out what is the matter than I am,” 
he thought. “ There is a sort of free- 
masonry between women, an electric 
affinity, which a man’s presence always 
destroys. How deathly pale Aurora 
looks ! Can it be possible that the trou- 
ble I expected has come so soon ?” 

He went to the stables, but not so 
much to look for John Mellish as in the 
hope of finding somebody intelligent 
enough to furnish him with a better ac- 
count of the murder than any he had yet 
heard. 

“Some one else, as well as. Aurora, 
must have had a reason for wishing to 
get rid of this man,” he thought. “There 
must have been some motive, — revenge, 
gain, — something which no one has yet 
fathomed.” 

He went into the stable-yard ; but he 
had no opportunity of making his inves- 
tigation, for John Mellish was standing 
in a listless attitude before a: small forge, 
watching the shoeing of one of his horses. 
The young squire looked up with a start 


as he recognized Talbot, and gave him 
his hand, wdth a few straggling words of 
welcome. Even in that moment Mr. 
Bulstrode saw that there was perhaps a 
greater change in John’s appearance than 
in that of Aurora. The Yorkshireman’s 
blue eyes had lost their brightness, his 
step its elasticity ; his face seemed sunk- 
en and haggard, and he evidently avoided 
meeting Talbot’s eye. He lounged list- 
lessly away from the forge, walking at 
his guest’s side in the direction of the 
stable-gates ; but he had the air of a 
man who neither know^s nor cares whither 
he is going. 

“ Shall we go to the house ?” he said. 
“You must want some luncheon after 
your journey.” He looked at his watch 
as he said this. It was half-past three, 
an hour after the usual time for luncheon 
at Mellish. 

“ I’ve been in the stables all the morn- 
ing,” he said. “ We’re busy making our 
preparations for the York Summer.” 

“ What horses do you run ?” Mr. 
Bulstrode asked, politely affecting to be 
interested in a subject that was utterly 
indifferent to him, in the hope that sta- 
ble-talk might rouse John from his list- 
less apathy. 

“What horses ?” repeated Mr. Mellish 
vaguely. “I — I hardly know. Langley 
manages all that for me, you know ; 
and — I — I forget the names of the horses 
he proposed, and — ” 

Talbot Bulstrode turned suddenly 
upon his friend, and looked him full in 
the face. They had left the stables by 
this time, and Were in a shady pathway 
that led through a ‘shrubbery towards 
the house. 

“John Mellish,” he said, “this is not 
fair towards an old friend. You have 
something on your mind, and you are 
trying to hide it from me.” 

The squire turned away his head. 

“ I have something on my mind, Tal- 
bot,” he said quietly. “ If you could 
help me, I’d ask your help more than 
any man’s. But you can’t, you can’t 1” 

“ But suppose I think I can help you ?” 
cried Mr. Bulstrode. . “ Suppose I mean 
to try and do so, whether you will or no ? 
I think I can guess what your trouble is, 
John ; but I thought y6u were a braver 
man than to give way under it; I thought 
you were just the sort of man to struggle 
through it nobly and bravely, and to get 


240 


AURORA FLOYD. 


the better of it by your own strength of 
will.” 

“ What do you mean ?” exclaimed 
John Mellish. “You can guess — you 
know — you thought! Have you no 
mercy upoh me, Talbot Bnlstrode ? 
Can’t you see that I’m almost mad, and 
that this is no time for you to force your 
sympathy upon me? Do you want me 
to betray myself? Do you want me to 
betray — ” 

He stopped suddenly, as if the words 
had choked him, and passionately stamp- 
ing his foot upon the ground, walked on 
hurriedly, with his friend still by his side. 

The dining-room looked dreary enough 
when the two men entered it, although 
the table gave promise of a very sub- 
stantial luncheon ; but there was no one 
to welcome them, or to officiate at the 
banquet. 

John seated himself wearily in a chair 
at the bottom of the table. 

“You had better go and see if Mrs. 
Eulstrode and your mistress are coming 
to luncheon,” he said to a servant, who 
left the room with his master’s message, 
and returned three minutes afterwards 
to say that the ladies were not coming. 

The ladies were seated side by side 
upon a low sofa in Aurora’s morning- 
room. Mrs. Mellish sat with her head 
upon her cousin’s shoulder. She had 
never had a sister, remember, and gentle 
Lucy stood in place of that near and 
tender comforter. Talbot was perfectly 
right; Lucy had accomplished that which 
he would have failed to bring about. 
She had found the key to her cousin’s 
unhappiness. 

“ Ceased to love you, dear !” exclaimed 
Mrs. Eulstrode, echoing the words that 
Aurora had last spoken. “ Impossible !” 

“It is true, Lucy,” Mrs. Mellish an- 
swered despairingly. “ He has ceased 
to love me. There is a black cloud be- 
tween us now, now that all secrets are 
done away with. It is very bitter for 
me to bear, Lucy ; for I thought we 
should be so happy and united. Eut — 
but it is only natural. He feels the 
degradation so much. How can he look 
at me without remembering who and 
what I am ? The widow of his groom I 
Can I wonder that he avoids me ?” 

“ Avoids you, dear I” 

“Yes, avoids me. We have scarcely 
spoken a dozen words to each other 


since the night of our return. He waa 
so good to me, so tender and devoted 
during the journey home, telling - me 
again and again that this discovery had 
not lessened his love, that all the trial 
and horror of the past few days had only 
shown him the great strength of his af- 
fection ; but on the night of our return, 
Lucy, he changed — changed suddenly 
and inexplicably ; and now I feel that 
there is a gulf between us that can never 
be passed again. He is alienated from 
,me for ever.” 

“Aurora, all this is impossible,” re- 
monstrated Lucy. “ It is your own mor- 
bid fancy, darling.” 

“ My fancy !” cried Aurora, bitterly. 
“Ah, Lucy, you cannot know how much 
I love my husband, if you think that I 
could be deceived in one look or tone 
of his. Is it my fancy that he averts his 
eyes when he speaks to me ? Is it my 
fancy that his voice changes when he 
pronounces my name ? Is it my fancy 
that he roams about the house like a 
ghost, and paces up and down his room 
half the night through ? If these things 
are my fancy. Heaven have mercy upon 
me, Lucy ; for I must be going mad.” 

Mrs. Eulstrode started as she looked 
at her cousin. Could it be possible that 
all the trouble and confusion of the past 
week or two had indeed unsettled this 
poor girl’s intellect ? 

“ My poor Aurora !” she murmured, 
stpoothing the heavy hair away from her 
cousin’s tearful eyes ; “ my poor darling, 
how is it possible that John should 
change towards you ? He loved you 
so dearly, so devotedly ; surely nothing 
could alienate hira from you.” 

“ I used to think so, Lucy,” Aurora 
murmured in a low, heart-broken voice ; 
“ I used to think nothing could ever come 
to part us. He said he would follow me 
to the uttermost end of the world ; be 
said that no obstacle on earth should ever- 
separate us; and now — ” 

She could not finish the sentence, for 
she broke into convulsive sobs, and 
hid her face upon her cousin’s shoulder, 
staining Mrs. Eulstrode’s pretty silk 
dress with her hot tears. 

^ “ Oh, my love, my love !” she cried 
piteously, “ why didn’t I run away and 
hide myself from you? why didn’t I trust 
to my first instinct, and run away from 
you for ever ? Any suffering would be 


AURORA FLOYD. 


better than this ; any suffering would be 
better than this 1” 

Her passionate grief merged into a fit 
of hysterical weeping, in which she was 
no longer mistress of herself. She had 
suffered for the past few days more bit- 
terly than she had ever suffered yet. 
Lucy understood all that. She was one 
of those people whose tenderness in- 
stinctively comprehends the griefs of 
others. She knew how to treat her 
cousin ; and in less than an hour after 
this emotional outbreak Aurora was 
lying on her bed, pale and exhausted, 
but sleeping peacefully. She had carried 
the burden of her sorrow in silence du- 
ring the past few days, and had spent 
sleepless nights in brooding over her 
trouble. Her conversation with Lucy 
had unconsciously relieved her, and she 
slumbered calmly after the storm. Lucy 
sat by the bed watching the sleeper for 
some time, and then stole on tiptoe from 
the room. 

She w^ent, of course, to tell her hus- 
band all that had passed, and to take 
counsel from his sublime wisdom. 

She found Talbot in the drawing-room 
alone ; he had eaten a dreary luncheon 
in John’s company, and had been hastily 
left by his host immediately after the 
meal. There had been no sound of car- 
riage-wheels upon the gravelled drive all 
that morning ; there had been no callers 
at Mellish since John’s return ; for a 
horrible scandal had spread itself through- 
out the length and breadth of the coun- 
ty, and those who spoke of the young 
squire and his wife talked in solemn un- 
der-tones, and gravely demanded of each 
I other whether some serious step should 
not be taken about the business which 
was uppermost in every body’s mind. 

Lucy told Talbot all that Aurora had 
said to her. This was no breach of con- 
fidence in the young wife’s code of mo- 
rality ; for were not she and her husband 
immutably one, and how could she have 
any secret from him ? 

“I thought so I” Mr. Bulstrode said, 
when [iucy had finished her story. 

“You thought what, dear ?” 

“ That the breach between John and 
Aurora was a serious one. Don’t look 
so sorrowful, my darling. It must be 
our business to reunite these divided 
lovers. You shall comfort Aurora, Lucy ; 
and I’ll look after John.” 

15 


241 

Talbot Bulstrode kissed his little wife, 
and went straight away upon his friendly 
errand. He found John Mellish in his 
own room, — the room in which Aurora 
had written to him upon the day of her 
flight ; the room from which the mur- 
derous weapon had been stolen by some 
unknown hand. John had hidden the 
rusty pistol in one of the locked drawers 
of his Davenport ; but it was not to be 
supposed that the fact of its discovery 
could be locked up or hidden away. 
That had been fully discussed in the ser- 
vants’ hall ; and who shall doubt that 
it had travelled further, percolating 
through some of those sinuous channels 
which lead away from every household ? 

“ I want you to come for a walk with 
me, Mr. John Mellish,” said Talbot im- 
peratively ; “ so put on your hat, and 
come into the park. You are the most 
agreeable gentleman I ever had the 
honor to visit, and the attention you 
pay your guests is really something re- 
markable.” 

Mr. Mellish made no reply to this 
speech. He stood before his friend, pale, 
silent, and sullen. He was no more like 
the hearty Yorkshire squire whom we 
have known, than he was like Yiscount 
Palmerston or Lord Clyde. He was 
transformed out of himself by some great 
trouble that was preying upon his mind ; 
and being of a transparent and childishly 
truthful disposition, was unable to dis- 
guise his anguish. 

“John, John,” cried Talbot, “we 
were little boys together at Rugby, and 
have backed each other in a dozen child- 
ish fights. Is it kind of you to with- 
hold your friendship from me now, when 
I have come here on purpose to be a 
friend to you — to you and to Aurora ?” 

John Mellish turned away his head as 
his friend mentioned that familar name; 
and the gesture was not lost upon Mr. 
Bulstrode. 

“John, why do you refuse to trust 
me ?” 

“I don’t refuse. I — why did you 
come to this accursed house ?” cried 
John Mellish passionately; “why did 
you come here, Talbot Bulstrode ? You 
don’t know the blight that is upon this 
place, and those who live in it, or you 
would have no more come here than you 
would willingly go to a plague-stricken 
city. Do you know that since I came 


242 


AURORA FLOYD. 


back from London not a creature has 
called at this house ? Do you know that 
when I and — my wife — went to church 
on Sunday, the people we knew sneaked 
away from our path as if we had just re- 
covered from typhus fever ? Do you 
know that the cursed gaping rabble come 
from Doncaster to stare over the park- 
palings, and that this house is a show to 
half the West Riding? Why do you 
come here ? You will be stared at, and 
grinned at, and scandalised, — you, who 
— ! Go back to London to-night, Tal- 
bot, if you don’t want to drive me mad.” 

“ Not till you trust mb with your trou- 
bles, John,” answered Mr. Bulstrode 
firmly. “Put on your hat, and come 
out with me. 1 want you to show me 
the spot where the murder was done.” 

“You may get some one else to show it 
you,” muttered John sullenly ; “ I’ll not 
go there I” 

“John Mellish,” cried Talbot sud- 
denly, “ am I to think you a coward and 
a fool ? By the heaven that’s above me, 
I shall think so if you persist in this 
nonsense. Come out into the park with 
me ; I have the claim of past friendship 
upon you, and I’ll not have that claim 
set aside by any folly of yours.” 

The two men went out upon the lawn, 
John complying moodily enough with 
his friend’s request, and walked silently 
across the park towards that portion of 
the wood in which James Conyers had 
met his death. They had reached one 
of the loneliest and shadiest avenues in 
this wood, and were, in fact, close against 
the spot from which Samuel Prodder had 
watched his niece and her companion on 
the night of the murder, when Talbot 
stopped suddenly, and laid his hand on 
the squire’s shoulder. 

“ John,” he said, in a determined tone, 
“ before we go to look at the place where 
this bad man died, you must tell me your 
trouble.” 

Mr. Mellish drew himself up proudly, 
and looked at the speaker with gloomy 
defiance lowering upon his face. 

“ I will tell no man that which I do 
not choose to tell,” he said firmly ; and 
then, with a sudden change that was 
terrible to see, he cried impetuously, 
“ Why do you torment me, Talbot ? I 
tell you that I can’t trust you — I can’t 
trust any one upon earth. If — if I told 
you — the horrible thought that — if I told 


you, it would be your duty to — I — Tal- 
bot, Talbot, have pity upon me — let me 
alone — go away from me — I — ” 

Stamping furiously, as if he would 
have trampled down the cowardly de- 
spair for which he despised himself, and 
beating his forehead with his clenched 
fists, John Mellish turned away from his 
friend, and, leaning against the gnarled 
branch of a great oak, wept aloud. Tal- 
bot Bulstrode waited till the paroxysm 
had passed away before he spoke again ; 
but when his friend had grown calmer, 
he li ed his arm about him, and drew 
him away almost as tenderly as if the 
big Yorkshireman had been some sorrow- 
ing woman, sorely in need of manly help 
and comfort. 

“ John, John,” he said gravely, “thank 
God for this ; thank God for any thing 
that breaks the ice betweem us. I know 
what your trouble is, poor old friend, 
and I know that you have no cause for 
it. Hold up your head, man, and look 
straightforward to a happy future. I 
know the black thought that has been 
gnawing at your poor foolish manly 
heart ; you think that Aurora murdered 
the gy'oom 

John Mellish started, shuddering con- 
vulsively. 

“No, no,” he gasped; “who said so 
— who said — ?” 

“You think this, John,” continued 
Talbot Bulstrode ; “ and you do her the 
most grievous wrong that ever yet was 
done to woman ; a more shameful wrong 
than I committed when I thought that 
Aurora Floyd had been guilty of some 
base intrigue.” 

“You don’t know — ” stammered John. 

“ I don’t know I I know all, and fore- 
saw trouble for you, before saw the 
cloud that was in the sky. But I never 
dreamt of this. I thought the foolish 
country-people would suspect your wife, 
as it always pleases people to try and fix 
a crime upon the person in whom that 
crime would be more particularly atro- 
cious. I was prepared for this ; but to 
think that you — you, John, who should 
have learned to know your wife by this 
time — to think that you should suspect 
the woman you have loved of a foul and 
treacherous murder !” 

How do we know that the — that the 
man was murdered?” cried John vehe- 
mently. “ Who says that the deed was 


AURORA FLOYD. 


243 ' 


treacherously done ? He may have 
goaded her beyond endurance, insulted 
her generous pride, stung her to the very 
quick, and in the madness of her passion 
— having that wretched pistol in her pos- 
session — she may — 

“ Stop !” interrupted Talbot. What 
pistol? You told me the weapon had 
not been found. 

It was found upon the night of our 
return.” 

Yes ; but why do you associate this 
weapon with Aurora? What do you 
mean by saying that the pistol was in her 
possession ?” 

“Because — 0 my God I Talbot, why 
do you wring these things from me ?” 

“ For your own good, and for the jus- 
tification of an innocent woman ; so help 
me. Heaven I” answered Mr. Bulstrode. 
“ Do not be afraid to be candid with me, 
John. Nothing would ever make me 
believe Aurora Mellish guilty of this 
crime.” 

The Yorkshireman turned suddenly 
towards his friend, and leaning upon 
Talbot Bulstrode’s shoulder, wept for 
the second time during that woodland 
ramble. 

“May God in heaven bless you for 
this, Talbot I” he cried passionately. 
“ Ah, my love, my dear, what a wretch 
I have been to you ! but Heaven is my 
witness that, even in my worst agony of 
doubt and horror, my love has never 
lessened. It never could ; it never 
could 1” 

“ John, old fellow,” said Mr. Bul- 
strode cheerfully, “ perhaps, instead of 
talking this nonsense (which leaves me 
entirely in the dark as to every thing that 
has happened since you left London), 
you will do me the favor to enlighten 
me as to the cause of these foolish sus- 
picions.” 

They had reached the ruined summer- 
house and the pool of stagnant water, on 
the margin of which James Conyers had 
met with his death. Mr. Bulstrode seat- 
ed himself upon a pile of broken timber, 
while John Mellish paced up and down 
the smooth patch of turf between the 
summer-house and the water, and told, 
disjointedly enough, the story of the find- 
ing of the pistol, which had been taken 
out of his room. 

“ I saw that pistol upon the day of the 
murder,” he said. “ I took particular 


notice of it ; for I was cleaning my guns 
that morning, and I left them all in con- 
fusion while I went down to the lodge 
to see the trainer. When I came back 
—I—” 

“Well, what then ?” 

“ Aurora had been setting my guns in 
order.” 

“ You argue, therefore, that your wife 
took the pistol ?” 

John looked piteously at his friend ; 
but Talbot’s grave smile reassured him. 

“No one else had permission to go 
into the room,” he answered. “ I keep 
my papers and accounts there, you know ; 
and it’s an understood thing that none 
of the servants are allowed to go there, 
except when they clean the room.” 

“ To be sure ! But the room is not 
locked, I suppose ?” 

“ Locked ! of course not !” 

“And the windows — which open to 
the ground — are sometimes left open, I 
dare say ?” 

“ Almost always in such weather as 
this.” 

“Then, my dear John, it may be just 
possible that some one who had not per- 
mission to enter the room did, neverthe- 
less, enter it, for the purpose of abstract- 
ing this pistol. Have you asked Au- 
rora why she took upon herself to re- 
arrange your guns ? — she had never done 
such a thing before, I suppose ?” 

“Oh, yes, very often. I’m rather in 
the habit of leaving them about after 
cleaning them ; and my darling under- 
stands all about them as well as I do. 
She has often put them away for me.” 

“ Then there was nothing particular 
in her doing so upon the day of the 
murder. Have you asked her how long 
she was in your room, and whether she can 
remember seeing this particular pistol, 
among others ?” 

“Ask her I” exclaimed John; “how 
could I ask her when — ” 

“ When you had been mad enough to 
suspect her. No, my poor old friend ; 
you made the same mistake that I com- 
mitted at Eelden. You presupposed the 
guilt of the' woman you loved ; and you 
were too gr.eat a coward to investigate 
the evidence upon which your suspicions 
were built. Had I been wise enough, 
instead of blindly questioning this poor 
bewildered girl, to tell her plainly what 
it was that I suspected, the iiicontro- 


AUEORA FLOYD. 


244 

vertible truth would have flashed out of 
her augry eyes, and one indignant denial 
would have told me how basely 1 had 
wronged her. You shall not make the 
mistake that I made, John. You must 
go frankly and fearlessly to the wife you 
love, tell her of the suspicion that over- 
clouds her fame, and implore her to help 
you to the uttermost of her power in 
unravelling the mystery of this man’s 
death. The assassin must be found, 
John ; for so long as he remains undis- 
covered, you and your wife will be the 
victims of every penny-a-liner who finds 
himself at a loss for a paragraph.” 

“Yes,” Mr. Mellish answered bitterly, 
“the papers have been hard at it already ; 
and there’s been a fellow hanging about 
the place for the last few days whom I’ve 
had a very strong inclination to thrash. 
Some reporter, I suppose, come to pick 
up information.” 

“ I suppose so,” Talbot answered 
thoughtfully ; “ what sort of a man was 
he ?” 

“A decent-looking fellow enough ; but 
a Londoner, I fancy, and — stay I” ex- 
claimed John suddenly, “there’s a man 
coming towards us from the turnstile, 
and unless I’m considerably mistaken, 
it’s the very fellow.” 

Mr. Mellish was right. 

The wood was free to any foot-pas- 
senger who pleased to avail himself of 
the pleasant shelter of spreading beeches, 
and the smooth carpet of mossy turf, 
rather than tramp wearily upon the dusty 
highway. 

The stranger advancing from the 
turnstile was a decent-looking person, 
dressed in dark tight-fitting clothes, and 
making no unnecessary or ostentatious 
display of linen, for his coat was but- 
toned tightly to the chin. He looked 
at Talbot and John as he passed them, — 
not insolently, or even inquisitively, but 
with one brightly rapid and searching 
glance, which seemed to take in the 
most minute details in the appearance 
of both gentlemen. Then, walking on 
a few paces, he stopped and looked 
thoughtfully at the pond, and the bank 
above it. 

“This is the place, I think, gentle- 
men ?” he said, in a frank and rather 
free-and-easy manner. 

Talbot returned his look with interest. 


“If you mean the place where the 
murder was committed, it is,” he said. 

“Ah, I understood so,” answered the 
stranger, by no means abashed. 

He looked at the bank, regarding it, 
now from one point, now from another, 
like some skilful upholsterer taking the 
measure of a piece of furniture. Then 
walking slowly round the pond, he 
seemed to plumb the depth of the stag- 
nant water with his small gray eyes. 

Talbot Bulstrode watched the man as 
he took this mental photograph of the 
place. There was a business-like com- 
posure in his manner, which was entirely 
different to the eager curiosity of a 
scandalmonger and a busybody. 

Mr. Bulstrode rose as the man walked 
away, and went slowly after him. 

“ Stop where you are, John,” he said, 
as he left his companion ; “ I’ll find out 
who this fellow is.” 

He walked on, and overtook the 
stranger at about a hundred yards from 
the pond. 

“I want to have a few words with you 
before you leave the park, my friend,” 
he said quietly; “unless I’m very much 
mistaken, you are a member of the de- 
tective police, and come here with cre- 
dentials from Scotland Yard.” 

The man shook his head, with a quiet 
smile. 

“ I’m not obliged to tell every body 
my business,” he answered coolly ; “ this 
footpath is a public thoroughfare, I be- 
lieve ?” 

“ Listen to me, my good fellow,” said 
Mr. Bulstrode. “ It may serve your pur- 
pose to beat about the bush ; but I have 
no reason to do so, and therefore may as 
well come to the point at once. If you 
are sent here for the purpose of discover- 
ing the murderer of James Conyers, you 
can be more welcome to no one than to 
the' master of that house.” 

He pointed to the Gothic chimneys 
as he spoke. 

“ If those who employ you have pro- 
mised you a liberal reward, Mr. Mellish 
will willingly treble the amount they may 
have offered you. He would not give 
you cause to complain of his liberality, 
should you succeed in accomplishing the 
purpose of your errand. If you think 
you will gain any thing by underhand 
measures, and by keeping yourself dark, 


AURORA FLOYD. 


245 


you are very much mistaken ; for no one 
can be better able or more willing to 
give you assistance in this than Mr. and 
Mrs. Mellish.” 

The detective — for he had tacitly ad- 
mitted the fact of his profession — looked 
doubtfully at Talbot Bulstrode. 

“You’re a lawyer, I suppose?” he 
said. 

“ I am Mr. Talbot Bulstrode, member 
for Penruthy, and the husband of Mrs. 
Mellish’s first cousin.” 

The detective bowed. 

“ My name is Joseph Grimstone, of 
Scotland Yard and Ball’s Pond,” he 
said ; “ and I certainly see no objection 
to our working together. If Mr. Mellish 
is prepared to act on the square, I’m 
prepared to act with him, and to accept 
any reward his generosity may offer. 
But if he or any friend of his wants to 
hoodwink Joseph Grimstone, he’d better 
think twice about the game before he 
tries it on ; that’s all.” 

Mr. Bulstrode took no notice of this 
threat, but looked at his watch before 
replying to the detective. 

“ It’s a quarter past six,” he said. 
“ Mr. Mellish dines at seven. Can you 
call at the house, say at nine, this eve- 
ning ? You shall then have all the as- 
sistance it is in our power to give you.” 

“ Certainly, sir. At nine this evening.” 

“ We shall be prepared to receive you. 
Good afternoon.” 

Mr. Grimstone touched his hat, and 
strolled quietly away under the shadow 
of the beeches, while Talbot Bulstrode 
walked back to rejoin his friend. 

It may be as well to take this oppor- 
tunity of stating the reason of the de- 
tective’s early appearance at Mellish 
Park. Upon the day of the inquest, 
and consequently the next day but one 
after the murder, two anonymous letters, 
worded in the same manner, and written 
by the same hand, were received respect- 
ively by the head of the Doncaster con- 
stabulary and by the chief of the Scot- 
land-Yard detective confederacy. 

These anonymous communications — 
WTitten in a hand which, in spite of all 
attempt at disguise, still retained the 
spidery peculiarities of feminine cali- 
graphy — pointed, by a sinuous and in- 
ductive process of reasoning, at Aurora 
Mellish as the murderess of James Con- 
yers. I need scarcely say that the writer 


was no other than Mrs. Powell. She 
has disappeared for ever from my story, 
and I have no wish to blacken a character 
which can ill afford to be slandered. The 
ensign’s widow actually believed in the 
guilt of her beautiful patroness. It is so 
easy for an envious woman to believe 
horrible things of the more prosperous 
sister whom she hates. 


CHAPTER XXXYI. 

KEUNION. 

“We are on the verge of a precipice,” 
Talbot Bulstrode thought, as he prepared 
for dinner in the comfortable dressing- 
room allotted to him at Mellish, — “ we 
are on the verge of a precipice, and 
nothing but a bold grapple with the 
worst can save us. Any reticence, any 
attempt at keeping back suspicious facts, 
or hushing up awkward coincidences, 
would be fatal to us. If John had made 
away with this pistol ^vith which the deed 
was done, he would have inevitably fixed 
a most fearful suspicion upon his wife. 
Thank God I came here to-day I We 
must look matters straight in the face, 
and our first step must be to secure 
Aurora’s help. So long as she is silent 
as to her share in the events of that day 
and night, there is a link missing in the 
chain, and we are all at sea. John must 
speak to her to-night ; or perhaps it will 
be better for me to speak.” 

Mr. Bulstrode went down to the draw- 
ing-room, where he found his friend pa- 
cing up and down, solitary and wretched. 

“The ladies are going to dine up- 
stairs,” said Mr. Mellish, as Talbot 
joined him. “ I have just had a message 
to say so. Why does she avoid me, 
Talbot ? why does my wife avoid me like 
this? We have scarcely spoken to each 
other for days.” 

“ Shall I tell you why, you foolish 
John ?” answered Mr. Bulstrode. “Your 
wife avoids you because you have chosen 
to alienate yourself from her, and because 
she thinks, poor girl, that she has lost 
your affection. She fancies that the dis- 
covery of her first marriage has caused 
a revulsion of feeling, and that you no 
longer love her.” 


246 


AURORA FLOYD. 


“No longer love her I” cried John. 
“ 0 my God I she ought to know that, 
if I could give my life for her fifty times 
over, 1 would do it, to save her one pang. 
I would do it, so help me. Heaven, though 
she were the guiltiest wretch that had 
ever crawled the earth !” 

“ But no one asks yon to do any thing 
of the kind,” said Mr. Bulstrode. “You 
are only requested to be reasonable and 
patient, to put a proper trust in Provi- 
dence, and to be guided by people who 
are rather less impetuous than your un- 
governable self.” 

“ I will do what yop like, Talbot ; I 
will do what you like.” 

Mr. Mellish pressed his friend’s hand. 
Had he ever thought, when he had seen 
Talbot an accepted lover at Felden, and 
had hated him with a savage and wild 
Indian-like fury, that he would come to 
be thus humbly grateful to him ; thus 
pitifully dependent upon his superior 
wisdom ? He wrung the young politi- 
cian’s hand, and promised to be as sub- 
missive as a child beneath his guid- 
ance. 

In compliance, therefore, with Talbot’s 
commands, he ate few morsels of fish, 
and drank a couple of glasses of sherry; 
and having thus gone through a show 
of dining, he went with Mr. Bulstrode 
to seek Aurora. 

She was sitting with her cousin in the 
morning-room, looking terribly pale in 
the dim dusk of the August evening, — 
pale and shadowy in her loose white- 
muslin dress. She had only lately risen 
after a long feverish slumber, and had 
pretended to dine out of courtesy to her 
guest. Lucy had tried in vain to com- 
fort her cousin. This passionate, im- 
petuous, spoiled child of fortune and 
affection refused all consolation, crying 
out again and again that she had lost 
her husband’s love, and that there was 
nothing left for her upon earth. 

But in the very midst of one of these 
despondent speeches, she sprang up from 
her seat, erect and trembling, with her 
parted lips quivering and her dark eyes 
dilated, startled by the sound of a fa- 
miliar step, which within the last few 
days had been seldom heard in the cor- 
ridor outside her room. She tried to 
speak, but her voice failed her ; and in 
another moment the door had been 
dashed open by a strong hand, and her 


husband stood in the room, holding out 
his arms and calling to her, 

“ Aurora ! Aurora ! my own dear love, 
my own poor darling !” 

She was folded to his breast before 
she knew that Talbot Bulstrode stood 
close behind him. 

“My own darling,” John said, “my 
own dearest, you cannot tell how cruelly 
I have wronged you. But, oh, my love, 
the wrong has brought unendurable tor- 
ture with it. My poor guiltless girl I 
how could I — how could I — But I was 
mad, and it was only when Talbot — ” 

Aurora lifted her head from her hus- 
band’s breast and looked wonderingly 
into his face, utterly unable to guess the 
meaning of these broken sentences. 

Talbot laid Ms hand upon his friend’s 
shoulder. “You will frighten your wife 
if you go on in this manner, John,” he 
said quietly. “You mustn’t take any 
notice of his agitation, my dear Mrs. 
Mellish. There is no cause, believe me, 
for all this outcry. Will you sit down 
by Lucy and compose yourself? It is 
eight o’clock, and between this and nine 
we have some serious business to settle.” 

“ Serious business !” repeated Aurora 
vaguely. She was intoxicated by her 
sudden happiness. She had no wish to 
ask any explanation of the mystery of 
the past few days. It was all over, and 
her faithful husband loved her as devot- 
edly and tenderly as ever. How could 
she wish to know more than this ? 

She seated herself at Lucy’s side, in 
obedience to Talbot ; but she still held 
her husband’s hand, she still looked in 
his face, for the moment most supremely 
unconscious that the scheme of creation 
included any thing beyond this stalwart 
Yorkshireman. 

Talbot Bulstrode lighted the lamp 
upon Aurora’s writing-table,— a shaded 
lamp, which only dimly illuminated the 
twilight room,— and then, taking his seat 
near it, said gravely. 

“My dear Mrs. Mellish, I shall be 
compelled to say something which I fear 
may inflict a terrible shock upon you. 
But this is no time for reservation; 
scarcely a time for ordinary delicacy. 
Will you trust in the love and friendship, 
of those who are around you, and pro- 
mise to bear this new trial bravely ? I 
believe and hope that it will be a very 
brief one.” 


AURORA FLOYD. 


247 

Aurora looked wonderingly at her that tlie murderer was undoubtedly a 
husband, not at Talbot. stranger. Each man brinirs forward a 


“ A new trial she said inquiringly. 

“You know that the murderer of 
James Conyers has not yet been disco- 
vered said Mr. Bulstrode. 

“ Yes, yes ; but what of that 

“ My dear Mrs. Mellish, my dear Au- 
rora, the world is apt to take a morbid 
delight in horrible ideas. There are 
some people who think that you are 
guilty of this crime 

She rose suddenly from her low seat, 
and turned her face towards the lamp- 
light, with a look of such blank amaze- 
ment, such utter wonder and bewilder- 
ment, that had Talbot Bulstrode until 
that moment believed her guilty, he must 
thenceforth and for ever have been firmly 
convinced of her innocence, 
she repeated. 

Then turning to her husband, with a 
sudden alteration in her face, that blank 
amazement changing to a look of sor- 
row, mingled with reproachful wonder, 
she said in a low voice, 

“ You thought this of me, John ; you 
thought this !” 

John Mellish bowed his head before 
her. 

“ I did, my dear,” he murmured ; “ God 
forgive me for my wicked folly ; I did 
think this, Aurora. But I pitied you, 
and was sorry for you, my own dear love ; 
and when I thought it most, I would 
have died to save you from shame or sor- 
row. My love has never changed, Au- 
rora; my love has never changed.” 

She gave him her hand, and once more 
resumed her seat. She sat for some 
moments in silence, as if trying to col- 
lect her thoughts, and to understand the 
meaning of this strange scene. 

“ Who suspects me of this crime ?” 
she said presently. “ Has any one else 
suspected me ? Any one besides — my 
husband.” 

“ I can scarcely tell you, my dear Mrs. 
Mellish,” answered Talbot ; “ when an 
event of this kind takes place, it is very 
difficult to say who may or may not be 
suspected. Different persons set up dif- 
ferent theories ; one man writes to a 
newspaper to declare that, in his opinion, 
the crime was committed by some per- 
son within the house ; another man writes 
as positively to another paper, asserting 


mass of supposititious evidence in favor 
of his own argument, and each thinks a 
great deal more of proving his own 
cleverness than of furthering the ends of 
justice. No shadow of slander must rest 
upon this house, or upon those who live 
in it. It is necessary, therefore, imi)cra- 
tively necessary, that the real murderer 
should be found. A London detective 
is already at work. These men are very 
clever ; some insignificant circumstance, 
forgotten by those most interested in dis- 
covering the truth, would be often enough 
to set a detective on the right track. 
This man is coming here at nine o’clock ; 
and we are to give him all the assistance 
we can. Will you help us, Aurora?” 

“ Help you ? How ?” 

“By telling us all you know of the 
night of the murder. Why were you in 
the wood that night ?” 

“ I was there to meet the dead. man.” 

“ For what purpose ?” 

Aurora was silent for some moments, 
and then looking up with a bold, half- 
defiant glance, she said suddenly, 

“ Talbot Bulstrode, before you blame 
or despise me, remember how the tie 
that bound me to this man had been 
broken. The law would have set me 
free from him, if I had been brave enough 
to appeal to the law ; and was I to suf- 
fer all my life because of the mistake I 
had made in not demanding a release 
from the man whose gross infidelity en- 
titled me to be divorced from him ? Hea- 
ven knows I had borne with him ])a- 
tiently enough. I had endured his 
vulgarity, his insolence, his presumption ; 

I had gone penniless while he spent my 
father’s money in a gambling-booth on 
a race-course, and dinnerless while he 
drank champagne with cheats and re- 
probates. Remember this, when you 
blame me most. I went into the wood 
that night to meet him for the last time 
upon this earth. He had promised me 
that he would emigrate to Australia 
upon the payment of a certain sum of 
money.” . 

“ And you went that night to pay it 
to him ?” cried Talbot eagerly. 

“ I did. He was insolent, as he al- 
ways was ; for he hated me for having 
discovered that which shut him out from 
all claim upon my fortune. He hated 


248 


AURORA FLOYD. 


himself for his folly in not having played 
his cards better. Angry words passed 
between us ; but it ended in liis declaring 
his intention of starting for Liverpool 
early the next morning, and — ” 

You gave him the money 

“Yes.’’ 

“But tell me, — tell me, Aurora,” cried 
Talbot, almost too eager to find words, 
“how long had you left him when you 
heard the report of the pistol ?” 

“Not more than ten minutes.” 

“John Mellish,” exclaimed Mr. Bul- 
strode, “was there any money found 
upon the person of the fnurdered man ?” 

, “ No — yes; I believe there was a little 
silver,” Mr. Mellish answered vaguely. 

“ A little silver !” cried Talbot con- 
temptuously. “Aurora, what was the 
sum you gave James Conyers upon the 
night of his death ?” 

“Two thousand pounds.” 

“ In a cheque ?” 

“ No ; in notes.” 

“And that money has never been 
heard of since ?” 

No ; John Mellish declared that he 
had never heard of it. 

“ Thank God I” exclaimed Mr. Bul- 
strode ; “we shall find the murderer.” 

“What do you mean?” asked John. 

“ Whoever killed James Conyers, 
killed him in order to rob him of the 
money that he had upon him at the time 
of his death.” 

“ But who could have known of the 
money ?” asked Aurora. 

“Any body ; the pathway through the 
wood is a public thoroughfare. Your 
conversation with the murdered man 
may have been overheard. You talked 
about the money, I suppose ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Thank God, thank God I Ask your 
wife’s pardon for the cruel wrong you 
have done her, John, and then come 
down-stairs with me. It’s past nine, and 
I dare say Mr. Grirastone is waiting for 
us. But stay, — one word, Aurora. The 
pistol with wdiich this man was killed 
was taken from this house, from John’s 
room. Did you know that ?” 

“No; how should I know it?” Mrs. 
Mellish asked naively. 

“ That fact is against the theory of 
the murder having been committed by a 
stranger. Is there any one of the ser- 


vants whom you could suspect of such a 
crime, John ?” 

“No,” answered Mr. Mellish de- 
cisively ; “ not one.” 

“ And yet the person who committed 
the murder must have been the person 
who stole your pistol. You, John, de- 
clare that very pistol to have been in 
your possession upon the morning before 
the murder.” 

“ Most certainly.” 

“ You put John’s guns back into their 
places upon that morning, Aurora,” said 
Mr. Bulstrode; “do you remember seeing 
that particular pistol ?” 

“No,” Mrs. Mellish answered; “I 
should not have known it from the 
others.” 

“ You did not find any of the servants 
in the room that morning ?” 

“ Oh, no,” Aurora answered imme- 
diately ; “ ISIrs. Powell came into the 
room while I was there. She was always 
following me about ; and 1 suppose she 
had heard me talking to — ” 

“ Talking to whom ?” 

“To James Conyers’s hanger-on and 
messenger, Stephen Hargraves, — the 
Softy, as they call him.” 

“You were talking to him? Then 
this Stephen Hargraves was in the room 
that morning ?” 

“ Yes; he brought me a message from 
the murdered man, and took back my 
answer.” 

“ Was he alone in the room ?” 

“ Yes ; I found him there when I went 
in expecting to find John. I dislike the 
man, — unjustly, perhaps ; for he is a poor, 
half-witted creature, who I dare say 
scarcely knows right from wrong; and I 
was angry at seeing him. He must have 
come in through the window.” 

A servant entered the room at this 
moment. He came to say that Mr. 
Grimstone had been waiting below for 
some time, and was anxious to see Mr. 
Bulstrode. 

Talbot and John went down-stairs to- 
gether. They found Mr. Joseph Grim- 
stone sitting at a table in the comforta- 
ble room that had lately been sacred to 
Mrs. Powell, with the shaded lamp drawn 
close to his elbow, and a greasy little 
memorandum-book open before him. He 
was thoughtfully employed making notes 
in this memorandum-book with a stumpy 


AUROKA FLOYD. 


249 


morsel of leiul-pencil — when do these sort 
of people begin their [)eMc*iIs, and how is 
it that they always seem to have arrived 
at the stump ? — when the two gentlemen 
entered. 

John Mellish leaned against the man- 
telpiece^ and covered his face with his 
hand. For any practical purpose, he 
might as well have been in his own room. 
He knew nothing of Talbotls reasons for 
this interview with the detective officer. 
He had no shadowy idea, no growing 
suspicion shaping itself slowly out of the 
confusion and obscurity, of the identity 
of the murderer. He only knew that his 
Aurora was innocent ; that she had in- 
dignantly refuted his base suspicion ; 
and that he had seen the truth, radiant 
as the light of inspiration, shining out 
of her beautiful face. 

Mr. Bulstrode rang, and ordered a 
bottle of sherry for the delectation of the 
detective ; and then, in a careful and 
business-like manner, he recited all that 
he had been able to discover upon the 
subject of the murder. Joseph Grim- 
stone listened very quietly, following 
Talbot Bulstrode with a shining track of 
lead-pencil hieroglyphics over the greasy 
paper, just as Tom Thumb strewed 
crumbs of bread in the forest-pathway, 
with a view to his homeward guidance. 
The detective only looked up now and 
then to drink a glass of sherry, and smack 
his lips with the quiet approval of a 
connoisseur. When Talbot had told all 
that he had to tell, Mr. Grimstone thrust 
the memorandum-book into a very tight 
breast-pocket, and taking his hat from 
under the chair upon which he had been 
seated, prepared to depart. 

If this information about the money 
is quite correct,’^ he said, “ I think I can 
see my way through the affair ; that is, 
if we can have the numbers of the notes. 
I can’t stir a peg without the numbers 
of the notes.” 

Talbot’s countenance fell. Here was 
a death-blow. Was it likely that Au- 
rora, that impetuous and unbusiness-like 
girl, had taken the numbers of the notes, ' 
which, in utter scorn and loathing, she 
had flung as a last bribe to the man she 
hated ? 


“I’ll go and make inquiries of Mrs. 
Mellish,” he said; “but I fear it is 
. scarcely likely I shall get the informa- 
tion you want.” 

He left the room ; but five minutes 
afterwards returned triumphant. 

“ Mrs. Mellish had the notes from her 
fatfier,” he said. “Mr. Floyd took a 
list of the numbers before he gave his 
daughter the money.” 

“ Then if you’ll be so good as to drop 
Mr. Floyd a line, asking for that list by 
return of post, I shall know how to act,” 
replied the detective. “I haven’t been 
idle this afternoon, gentlemen, any more 
than you. I went back after I parted 
with you, Mr. Bulstrode, and had an- 
other look at the pond. I found some- 
thing to pay me for my trouble.” 

He took from his waistcoat-pocket a 
small object, which he held between his 
finger and thumb. 

Talbot and John looked intently at 
this dingy object, but could make no- 
thing out of it. It seemed to be a mere 
disc of rusty metal. 

“ It’s neither more nor less than a brass 
button,” the detective said, with a smile 
of quiet superiority ; “ maker’s name, 
Crosby, Birmingham. There’s marks 
upon it which seem uncommon like blood ; 
and unless I’m very much mistaken, it’ll 
be found to fit pretty correct into the 
barrel of your pistol, Mr. Mellish. So 
what we’ve got to do is to find a gentle- 
man wearin’, or havin’ in his possession, 
a waistcoat with buttons by Crosby, 
Birmingham, and one button missin’; 
and if we happen to find the same gen- 
tleman changin’ one of the notes that 
Mr. Floyd took the numbers of, I don’t 
think we shall be very far off layin’ our 
hands on the man we want.” 

With which oracular speech Mr. Grim- 
stone departed, charged with a commis- 
sion to proceed forthwith to Doncaster, 
to order the immediate printing and cir- 
culating of a hundred bills, offering a re- 
ward of 200Z. for such information as 
would lead to the apprehension of the 
murderer of James Conyers. This re- 
ward to be given by Mr. Mellish, and to 
be over and above any reward offered by 
the Government. 


250 


AURORA FLOYD. 


CHAPTER XXXYII. 

THE BRASS BUTTON BY CROSBY, 
BIRMINGHAM. 

Mr. Matthew Harrison and Cap- 
tain Prodder were both accommodated 
with suitable entertainment at the sign 
of the “Crooked Rabbit;” but while 
the dog-fancier appeared to have ample 
employment in the neighborhood — em- 
ployment of a mysterious nature, which 
kept him on the tramp all' day, and sent 
him home at sunset, tired and hungry, 
to his hostelry — the sailor, having no- 
thing whatever to do, and a great burden 
of care upon his mind, found the time 
bang very heavily upon his hands ; al- 
though, being naturally of a social and 
genial temper, he made himself very 
much at home in his strange quarters. 
From Mr. Harrison the captain obtained 
much information respecting the secret 
of all the sorrow that had befallen his 
niece. The dog-fancier had known 
James Conyers from his boyhood ; had 
known his father, the “ swell” coachman 
of a Brighton Highflyer, or Sky-rocket, 
or Electric, and the associate of the no- 
blemen and gentlemen of that princely 
era, in which it was the right thing for 
the youthful aristocracy to imitate the 
manners of Mr. Samuel Weller, senior. 
Matthew Harrison had known the trainer 
in his brief and stormy married life, and 
had accompanied Aurora’s first husband 
as a humble dependent and hanger-on 
in that foreign travel which had been 
paid for out of Archibald Floyd’s check- 
book. The honest captain’s blood boiled 
as he heard that shameful story of 
treachery and extortion practised, upon 
an ignorant school-girl. Oh, that he had 
been by to avenge those outrages upon 
the child of the dark-eyed sister he had 
loved I His rage . against the undis- 
covered murderer of the dead man was 
redoubled when he remembered how 
comfortably James Conyers had escaped 
from his vengeance. 

Mr. Stephen Hargraves, the Softy, 
took good care to keep out of the way 
of the “ Crooked Rabbit,” having no 
wish to encounter Captain Prodder a 
second time ; but he still hung about 
the town of Doncaster, where he had a 
lodging up a wretched alley, hidden 
away behind one of the back streets — 


a species of lair common to every large 
town, and only to be found by the in- 
habitants of the locality. 

The Softy had been born and bred, 
and had lived his life in such a narrow 
radius, that the uprooting of one of the 
oaks in Mellish Park could scarcely be 
a slower or more painful operation than 
the severing of those ties of custom 
which held the boorish hanger-on to the 
neighborhood of the household in which 
he had so long been an inmate. But 
now that his occupation at Mellish was 
forever gone, and his patron, the trainer, 
dead, he was alone in the world, and 
had need to look out for a fresh situa- 
tion. 

But he seemed rather slow to do this. 
He was not a very prepossessing person, 
it must be remembered, and there were 
not very many services for which he was 
fitted. Although upwards of forty years 
of age, he was generally rather loosely 
described^as a young man who under- 
stood all about horses ; and this quali- 
fication was usually sufficient to procure 
for any individual whatever some kind 
of employment in the neighborhood of 
Doncaster. The Softy seemed, how- 
ever, rather to keep aloof from the 
people who knew and could have re- 
commended him ; and when asked why 
he did not seek a situation, gave eva- 
sive answers, and muttered something to 
the effect that he had saved . a little bit 
of money at Mellish Park, and had no 
need to come upon the parish if he was 
out of work for a week or two. 

John Mellish was so well known as a 
generous paymaster, that this was a mat- 
ter of surprise to no one. Steeve Har- 
graves had no doubt had pretty pickings 
in that liberal household. So the Softy 
went his way unquestioned, hanging 
about the town in a lounging, uncom- 
fortable manner, sitting in some public- 
house taproom half the day and night, 
drinking his meager liquor in a sullen 
and unsocial style peculiar to himself, 
and consorting with no one. 

He made his appearance at the* rail- 
way-station one day, and groped help- 
lessly through all the time-tables pasted 
against the walls ; but he could make 
nothing of them unaided; and was at last 
compelled to appeal to a good-tempered- 
looking ofiicial who was busy on the 
platform. 


AURORA FLOYD. 


*‘I want til’ Liverpool trayuns,” he 
said, “ and I can’t find uowght about 
’em here.” 

The official knew Mr. Hargraves, and 
looked at him with a stare of open 
wonder. 

“ My word I Steeve,” he said laugh- 
ing, “ what takes you to Liverpool ? I 
thought you’d never been farther than 
York in your life.” 

“Maybe I haven’t,” the Softy an- 
swered sulkily ; “ but that’s no reason I 
shouldn’t go now. I’ve heard of a situa- 
tion at Liverpool as I think’ll suit me.” 

“Not better than the place you had 
with Mr. Mellish.” 

“Perhaps not,” muttered Mr. Har- 
graves, with a frown darkening over his 
ugly face; “but Mellish Park be no 
pleace for me now, and arn’t been for a 
long time past.” 

The railway official laughed. 

The story of Aurora’s chastisement 
of the half-witted groom was pretty well 
known amongst the townspeople of Don- 
caster ; and I am sorry to say there were 
very few members of that sporting com- 
munity who did not admire the mistress 
of Mellish Park something more by rea- 
son of this little incident in her history. 

Mr. Hargraves received the desired 
information about the railway route 
between Doncaster and Liverpool, and 
then left the station. 

A shabby-looking little man, who had 
also been making some inquiries of the 
same official who had talked to the Softy, 
and had consequently heard the above 
brief dialogue, followed Stephen Har- 
graves from the station into the town. 
Indeed, had it not been that the Softy 
was unusually slow of perception, he 
might have discovered that upon this 
particular day the same shabby-looking 
little man generally happened to be 
hanging about any and every place to 
which he, Mr. Hargraves, betook him- 
self. But the cast-off retainer of Mellish 
Park did. not trouble himself with any 
such misgivings. His narrow intellect, 
never wide enough to take in many sub- 
jects at a time, was fully absorbed by 
other considerations ; and he loitered 
about with a gloomy and preoccupied 
expression in his face, that by no means 
enhanced his personal attractions. 

It is not to be supposed that Mr. Jo- 
seph Grimstone let the grass grow under 


251 

his feet after his interview with John 
Mellish and Talbot Bulstrode. He had 
heard enough to make his course pretty 
clear to him, and he went to work quietly 
and sagaciously to win the reward offered 
to him. 

There was not a tailor’s shop in Don- 
caster or its vicinity into which the de- 
tective did not make his way. There 
was not a garment confectionnee by any 
of the civil purveyors upon whom he in- 
truded, that Mr. Grimstone did not ex- 
amine ; not a drawer of odds and ends 
which he did not ransack, in his search 
for buttons by “ Crosby, maker, Bir- 
mingham.” But for a long time he made 
his inquisition in vain. Before the day 
succeeding that of Talbot’s arrival at 
Mellish was over, the detective had vis- 
ited every tailor or clothier in the neigh- 
borhood of the racing metropolis of the 
north, but no traces of “ Crosby, maker, 
Birmingham,” had he been able to find. 

Brass waistcoat-buttons are not particu- 
larly affected by the leaders of the fash- 
ion in the present day, and Mr. Grim- 
stone found almost every variety of fast- 
ening upon the waistcoats he examined, 
except that one special style of button, a 
specimen of which, out of shape and 
blood-stained, he carried deep in his 
trousers-pocket. 

He was returning to the inn at which 
he had taken up his abode, and where he i 
was supposed to be a traveler in the 
Glenfield starch and sugar-plum line, 
tired and worn out with a day’s useless 
work, when he was attracted by the ap- 
pearance of some ready-made garments 
gracefully festooned about the door of a 
Doncaster pawnbroker, who exhibited 
silver teaspoons, oil-paintings, boots and 
shoes, dropsical watches, doubtful rings, 
and remnants of silk and satin, in his 
artistically arranged window. 

Mr. Grimstone stopped short before 
the money-lender’s portal. 

“ I won’t be beaten,” he muttered be- 
tween his teeth. “ If this man has got 
any waistcoats. I’ll have a look at ’em.” 

He lounged into the shop in a leisurely 
manner, and asked the proprietor of the 
establishment if he had any thing cheap 
in the way of fancy waistcoats. 

Of course the proprietor had every 
thing desirable in that way, and from a 
kind of grove or arbor of all manner of 
dry goods at the back of the shop, he 


252 


AURORA FLOYD. 


brought out half-a-dozen brown paper 
parcels, the contents of which he exhib- 
ited to Mr. Joseph Grimstone. 

The detective looked at a great many 
waistcoats, but with no satisfactory re- 
sult. 

“You haven’t got any thing with 
brass buttons, I suppose he inquired 
at last. 

The proprietor shook his head reflec- 
tively. 

“ Brass buttons ain’t much worn now- 
adays,” he said ; “ but I’ll lay I’ve* got 
the very thing you want, now I come 
to think of it. I got ’em an uncommon 
bargain from a traveler for a Birming- 
ham house, who was here at the Sep- 
tember meeting three years ago, and lost 
a hatful of money upon Underhand, and 
left a lot of things with me, in order to 
make up what he wanted.” 

Mr. Grimstone pricked up his ears at 
.the sound of “Birmingham.” The 
pawnbroker retired once more to the 
mysterious caverns at the back of his 
shop, and after a considerable search 
succeeded in finding what he wanted. 
He brought another brown-paper parcel 
to the counter, turned the flaming gas a 
•little higher, and exhibited a heap of 
very gaudy and vulgar-looking waist- 
coats, evidently of that species of manu- 
facture which is generally called slop- 
work. 

“ These are the goods,” he said ; “ and 
very tasty and lively things they are, too. 
I had a dozen of ’em j and I’ve only got 
these five left.” 

Mr. Grimstone had taken up a waist- 
coat of a flaming check pattern, and was 
examining it by the light of the gas. 

Yes ; the purpose of his day’s work 
was accomplished at last. The back of 
the brass buttons bore the name of Cros- 
by, Birmingham. 

“You’ve only got five left out of the 
dozen,” said the detective ; “ then you’ve 
sold seven ?” 

“ I have.” 

“ Can you remember who you sold ’em 
to ?” 

The pawnbroker scratched his head 
thoughtfully. 

“ I think I must have sold ’em all to 
the men at the works,” he said. “ They 
take their wages once a fortnight ; and 
there’s some of ’em drop in here every 
other Saturday night to buy something 


or other, or to take something out of 
pledge. I know I sold four or five that 
way.” 

“ But can you remember selling one 
of them to any body else ?” asked the 
detective. “ I’m not asking out of curi- 
osity ; and I don’t mind standing some- 
thing handsome by and by, if you can 
give me the information I want. Think 
it over now, and take your time. You 
couldn’t have sold ’em all seven to the 
men from the works.” 

“ No ; I didn’t,” answered the pawn- 
broker after a pause. “ I remember 
now, I sold one of them — a fancy sprig 
on a purple ground — to Josephs, the 
baker in the next street ; and I sold 
another — a yellow stripe on a brown 
ground — to the head-gardener at Mellish 
Park.” 

Mr. Joseph Grimstone’s face flushed 
hot and red. His day’s work had not 
been wasted. He was bringing the but- 
tons by Crosby of Birmingham very 
near to where he wanted to bring them. 

“You can tell me the gardener’s 
name, I suppose ?” he said to the pawn- 
broker. 

“Yes; his name’s Dawson. He be- 
longs to Doncaster, and he and I were 
boys together. I should not have re- 
membered selling him the waistcoat, per- 
haps — for it’s nigh upon a year and a 
half ago — only he stopped and had a 
chat with me and my missis the night he 
bought it.” 

, Mr. Grimstone did not linger much 
longer in the shop. His interest in the 
waistcoats was evidently departed. He 
bought a couple of second-hand silk 
handkerchiefs, out of civility, no doubt ; 
and then bade the pawnbroker good- 
night. 

It was nearly nine o’clock ; but the 
detective only stopped at his inn long" 
enough to eat about a pound and a 
quarter of beefsteak, and drink a pint 
of die ; after which brief refreshment 
he started for Mellish Park on foot. It 
was the principle of his life to avoid 
observation, and he preferred the fatigue 
of a long and lonely walk to the risks 
contingent upon hiring a vehicle to con- 
vey him to his destination. 

Talbot and John had been waiting 
hopefully all day for the detective’s com- 
ing, and welcomed him very heartily 
when he appeared, between ten and 


AUROEA FLOYD. 


253 


eleven. He was shown into John’s own 
room this evening ; for the -two gentle- 
men were sitting there smoking and 
talking after Aurora and Lucy had gone 
to bed. Mrs, Mellish had good need 
of rest, and could sleep peacefully now ; 
for the dark shadow between her and 
her husband had gone forever, and she 
could not fear any peril, any sorrow, 
now that she knew herself to^be secure 
of his love. John looked up eagerly 
as Mr. Grirastone followed the servant 
into the room ; but a warning look from 
Talbot Bulstrode checked his impetuos- 
ity, and he waited till the door was shut 
before he spoke. 

“ Now, then, Grimstone,” he said, 

what news ?” 

“Well, sir, I’ve had a hard day’s 
work,” the detective answered gravely, 
“and perhaps neither of you gentlemen 
— not being professional — would think 
much of what I’ve done. But, for all 
that, I believe I’m bringiw’ it home, sir ; 
I believe I’m bringiii’ of it home.” 

“ Thank God for that !•” murmured 
Talbot Bulstrode reverently. 

He had thrown away his cigar, and 
was standing by the fireplace, with his 
arm resting upon the angle of the man- 
telpiece. 

“You’ve got a gardener by the ilame 
of Dawson in your service, Mr. Mel- 
lish ?” said the detective. 

“I have,” answered John; “but. 
Lord have mercy upon us I you don’t 
mean to say you think it’s him. Da\y- 
soii’s as good a fellow as ever breathed.” 

“ I don’t say I think it’s any one as 
yet, sir,” Mr. Grimstone answered sen- 
tentiously ; “ but when a man, as had 
two thousand pound upon him in bank- 
notes, is found in a wood shot through 
the heart, and the notes missin’ — the 
wood bein’ free to anybody as chose to 
walk in it — it’s a pretty open case for 
suspicion. I should like to see this man 
Dawson, if it’s convenient.” 

“To-night ?” asked John. 

“Yes; the sooner the better. The 
less delay there is in this sort of busi- 
ness, the more satisfactory for all parties ; 
with the exception of the party that’s 
wanted,” added the detective. 

“I’ll send for Dawson, then,” an- 
swered Mr. Mellish ; “ but I expect he’ll 
have gone to bed by this time.” 

“ Then he can but get up again, if he 


has, sir,” Mr. Grimstone said politely. 
“ I’ve set my heart upon seeing him to- 
night, if it’s all the same to you.” 

It is not to be supposed that John 
Mellish was likely to object to any ar- 
rangement which might hasten, if by but 
a moment’s time, the hour of the disco- 
very for which he is ardently prayed. 
He went straight off to the servants’ 
hall to make inquiries for the gardener, 
and left Talbot Bulstrode and the detec- 
tive together. 

“ There ain’t nothing turned up here, 
I suppose, sir,” said Joseph Grimstone, 
addressing Mr. Bulstrode, “ as will be 
of any help to us ?” 

“ Yes,” Talbot answered. “We have 
got the numbers of the notes which Mrs. 
Mellish gave the murdered man. I tele- 
graphed to Mr. Floyd’s country-house ; 
and he arrived here himself only an hour 
ago, bringing the list of the notes with 
him.” 

“And an uncommon plucky thing of 
the old gentleman to do, beggin’ your 
pardon, sir,” exclaimed the detective 
with enthusiasm. 

Five minutes afterwards Mr. Mellish 
re-entered the room, bringing the gar- 
dener with him. The man had been into 
Doncaster to see his friends, and only 
returned about half an hour before ; so 
the master of the house had caught him 
in the act of making havoc with a formi* 
dable cold joint, and a great jar of 
pickled cabbage, in the servants’ hall. 

“Now, you’re not to be frightened, 
Dawson,” said the young squire, with 
friendly indiscretion ; “of course nobody 
for a moment suspects you, any more 
than they suspect me ; but this gentle- 
man here wants to see you, and of course 
you know there’s no reason that he 
shouldn’t see you if he wishes it, though 
what he wants with you — ” 

Mr. Mellish stopped abruptly, arrested 
by a frown from Talbot Bulstrode ; and 
the gardener, who was innocent of the 
faintest com})rehension of his master’s 
meaning, pulled his hair respectfully, 
and shuffled nervously upon the slippery 
Indian matting. 

“I only want to ask you a question 
or two to decide a wager between these 
two gentlemen and me, Mr. Dawson,”, 
said the detective with reassuring fami- 
liarity. “Y"ou bought a second-hand 
waistcoat of Gogram, in the market- 


AURORA FLOYD. 


254 

place, didn’t you, about a year aud a 
half ago ?” 

“Ay, sure, sir. I bought a weskit 
at Gogram’s,” answered the gardener ; 
“but it weren’t second-hand, it were 
bran new.” 

“ A yellow stripe upon a brown 
ground ?” 

The man nodded, with his mouth wide 
open, in the extremity of his surprise at 
this London stranger’s familiarity with 
the details of his toilet. 

“ I dunno how you come to know 
about that weskit, sir,” he said, with a 
grin ; “it were wore out full six months 
ago ; for I took to wearin’ of ’t in t’ 
garden, and garden-work soon spiles any 
thing in the way of clothes ; but him as 
I give it to was glad enough to have it, 
though it was awful shabby.” 

“Him as you give it to?” repeated 
Mr. Grimstoiie, not pausing to amend 
the sentence, in his eagerness. “You 
gave it away, then ?” 

“ Yees, I gave it to th’ Softy ; and 
wasn’t the poor fond chap glad to get it, 
that’s ail ?” 

“ The Softy I” exclaimed Mr. Grim- 
stone. “ Who’s the Softy ?” 

“ The man we spoke of last night,” 
answered Talbot Bulstrode ; “ the man 
whom Mrs. Mellish found in this room 
upon the morning before the murder, — 
the man called Stephen Hargraves.” 

“ Ay, ay, to be sure ; I thought as 
much,” murmured the detective. “ That 
will do, Mr. Dawson,” he added, ad- 
dressing the gardener, who had shuffled 
a good deal nearer to the doorway in 
his uneasy state of mind. “ Stay, though ; 
I may as well ask you one more ques- 
tion. Were any of the buttons missing 
off that waistcoat when you gave it 
away ?” 

“Kot one on ’em,” answered the gar- 
dener decisively. “ My missus is too 
particklar for that. She’s a reg’lar toidy 
one, she is ; allers mendin’ and patchin’ ; 
and if one of t’ buttons got loose, she 
was sure to sew it on toight again be- 
fore it was lost.” 

“Thank you, Mr. Dawson,” returned 
the detective, with the friendly conde- 
scension of a superior being. “Good- 
night.” 

The gardener shuffled off, very glad 
to be relieved from the awful presence 
of his superiors, and to go back to the 


cold meat and pickles in the servants’ 
hall. 

“ I think I’m bringing the business 
into a nutshell, sir,” said Mr. Grimstone, 
when the door had closed upon the gar- 
dener. “ But the less said the better, 
just yet awhile. I’ll take the list of the 
numbers of the notes, please, sir ; and I 
believe I shall come upon you for that 
two hundred pound, Mr. Mellish, before 
either of us is many weeks older,” 

So, with the list made by cautious 
Archibald Floyd bestowed safely in his 
waistcoat-pocket, Mr. Joseph Grimstone 
walked back to Doncaster through the 
still summer’s night, intent upon the 
business he had undertaken. 

“ It looked uncommon black against 
the lady about a week ago,” he thought, 
as he\valked meditatively across the dewy 
grass in Mellish Park ; “ and I fancy 
the information they got at the Yard 
would have put a fool on the wrong 
scent, and kept him on it till the right 
one got worn out. But it’s clearing up, 
it’s clearing up beautiful ; and I think 
it’ll turn out one of the neatest cases I 
ever had the handling of.” 



CHAPTER XXXYIIL 

OFF THE SCENT. 

. It is scarcely necessary to say, that, 
with the button by Crosby in his pocket, 
and with the information acquired from 
Dawson the gardener stowed away care- 
fully in his mind, Mr. Joseph Grimstone 
looked with an eye of particular interest 
upon Steeve Hargraves the Softy. 

The detective had not come to Don- 
caster alone. He had brought with him 
a humble ally and follower, in the shape 
of the little shabby-lopking man w'ho had 
encountered the Softy at the railway- 
station, having received orders to keep 
a close watch upon Mr. Stephen Har- 
graves. It was of course a very easy 
matter to identify the Softy in the town 
of Doncaster, where he had been pretty 
generally known since his childhood. 

^ Mr. Grimstone had called upon a me- 
dical practitioner, and had submitted 
the^ button to him for inspection. The 
stains upon it were indeed that which 


AURORA FLOYD. 


255 


the detective had supposed^ blood ; and 
the surgeon detected a minute morsel 
of cartilage adhering to the jagged ha^p 
of the button ; but the same surgeon 
declared that this missile could not have 
been the only one used by the murderer 
of James Conyers. It had not been 
through the dead man’s body ; it had 
inflicted only a surface wound. 

The business which now lay before 
Mr. Grimstone was the tracing of one 
or other of the bank-notes ; and for this 
purpose he and his ally set to work upon 
the track of the Softy, with a view of dis- 
covering all the places which it was his 
habit to visit. The haunts alfected by 
Mr. Hargraves turned out to be some 
half-dozen very obscure public-houses ; 
and to each of these Joseph Grimstone 
W'ent in person. ' 

Hut he could discover nothing. All 
his inquiries only elicited the fact that 
Stephen Hargraves had not been ob- 
served to change, or attempt to change, 
any bank-note whatever. He had paid 
for all he had had, and spent more than 
it was usual for him to spend, drinking 
a good deal harder than had been his 
habit theretofore ; but he had paid in 
silver, except on one occasion, when he 
had changed a sovereign. The detective 
called at the bank ; but no person an- 
swering the description of Stephen Har- 
graves had been observed there. The 
detective endeavored to discover any 
friends or companions of the Softy ; 
but here again he failed. The half- 
witted hanger-on of the Mellish stables 
bad never made any friends, being en- 
tirely deficient in all social qualities. 

There was something almost miracu- 
lous in the manner in which Mr. Joseph 
Grimstone contrived to make himself 
master of any information which he 
wished to acquire ; and before noon on 
the day after his interview with Mr. 
Dawson the gardener, he had managed 
to eliminate all the facts set down above, 
and had also succeeded in ingratiating 
himself into the confidence of the dirty 
old proprietress of that humble lodging 
in which the Softy had taken up his 
abode. 

It is scarcely necessary to this story 
to tell how the detective went to work ; 
but while Stephen Hargraves sat sod- 
dening his stupid brain with medicated 
beer in a low taproom not far off, and 


while Mr. Grimstone’s ally kept close 
watch, holding himself in readiness to 
give warning of any movement on the 
part of the suspected individual, Mr. 
Grimstone himself went so cleverly to 
work in his manipulation of the Softy’s 
landlady, that in less than a quarter of an 
hour he had taken fufl possession of that 
weak point in the intellectual citadel 
which is commonly called the blind side, 
and was able to do what he pleased 
with the old woman and her wretched 
tenement. 

His peculiar pleasure was to make a 
very elaborate examination of the apart- 
ment rented by the Softy, and any other 
apartments, cupboards, or hiding-places 
to which Mr. Hargraves had access. 
But he found nothing to reward him for 
his trouble. The old woman was in the 
habit of receiving casual lodgers, resting 
for a night or so at Doncaster before 
tramping farther on their vagabond wan- 
derings ; and the six-roomed dwelling 
place was only furnished with such 
meager accommodation as may be ex- 
pected for fourpence, and sixpence, a 
night. There were few hiding-places. 
No carpets, underneath which fat bundles 
of bank-notes might be hidden ; no pic- 
ture-frames, behind which the same spe- 
cies of property might be bestowed ; no 
ponderous cornices or heavily-fringed 
valances shrouding the windows, and 
affording dusty recesses wherein the title- 
deeds of half-a-dozen fortunes might lie 
and rot. There were two or three cup- 
boards, into which Mr. Grimstone pene- 
trated with a tallow-candle ; but he dis- 
covered nothing of any more importance 
than crockery-ware, lucifer-matches, fire- 
wood, potatoes, bare ropes, on which an 
onion lingered here and there and 
sprouted dismally in its dark loneliness, 
empty ginger-beer bottles, oyster-shells, 
old boots and shoes, disabled mouse- 
traps, black-beetles, and humid fungi 
rising ghost-like from the damp and 
darkness. 

Mr. Grimstone emerged dirty and 
discomfited, from one of these dark re- 
cesses, after a profitless search which had 
occupied a couple of weary hours. 

“ Some other chap’ll go in and cut the 
ground under my feet, if I waste my time 
this way,” thought the detective. “ I’m 
blest if I don t think I’ve been a fool for 
my pains. The man carries the money 


256 


AUROKA FLOYD. 


about him, — that’s as clear as mud ; and 
if I were to search Doncaster till my 
hair jrot gray, I shouldn’t find what I 
want.” 

Mr. Grimstone shut the door of the 
last cupboard which he had examined 
with an impatient slam, and then turned 
towards the windo^\* There was no sign 
of his scout in the little alley before the 
house, and he had time therefore for 
further business. 

He had examined every thing in the 
Softy’s apartment, and he had paid par- 
ticular attention to the state of Mr. 
Hargrave’s wardrobe, ^;vhich consisted of 
a pile of garments, every one of which 
bore in its cut and fashion the stamp of 
a different individuality, and thereby pro- 
claimed itself as having belonged to 
another master. There was a Newmarket 
coat of John Mellish’s, and a pair of 
hunting-breeches, which could only have 
been built by the great Poole himself, 
split across the knees, but otherwise little 
the worse for wear. There was a linen 
jacket, and an old livery waistcoat that 
had belonged to one of the servants at 
the Park ; odd tops of every shade 
known in the hunting-field, from the 
spotless white or the delicate champagne- 
cleaned cream color of the dandy, to the 
favorite vinegar hue of the hard-riding 
country squire ; a groom’s hat with a 
tarnished band and a battered crown ; 
hob-nailed boots, which may have be- 
longed to Mr. Dawson ; corduroy 
breeches, that could only have fitted a 
dropsical lodge-keeper, long deceased ; 
and there was one garment which bore 
upon it the ghastly impress of a dreadful 
deed, that had but lately been done. 
This was the velveteen shooting-coat 
worn by James Conyers the trainer, 
which, pierced with the murderous bul- 
let, and stiffened by the soaking torrent 
of blood, had been appropriated by Mr. 
Stephen Hargraves in the confusion of 
the catastrophe. All these things, with 
sundry rubbish in the way of odd spurs 
and whip-handles, scraps of broken har- 
ness, ends of rope, and such other scrap- 
ings as only a miser loves to accumulate, 
were packed in a lumbering trunk cov- 
ered with mangy fur, and secured by 
about a dozen yards of knotted and 
jajgged rope, tied about it in such a 
manner as the Softy had considered suf- 


ficient to defy the most artful thief in 
Christendom.* 

Mr. Grimstone had made very short 
work of all the elaborate defenses in the 
way of knots and entanglements, and 
had ransacked the box from one end to 
the other ; nay, had even closely exa- 
mined the fur covering of the trunk, and 
had tested each separate brass-headed 
nail to ascertain if any of them had been 
removed or altered. He may have 
thought it just possible that two thou- 
sand pounds’ worth of Bank of England 
paper had been nailed, down under the 
mangy fur. He gave a weary sigh as 
he concluded his inspection, replaced 
the garments one by one in the trunk, 
reknotted and secured the jagged cord, 
and turned his back upon the Softy’s 
chamber. 

“ It’s no go,” he thought. “ The 
yellow-striped waistcoat isn’t among his 
clothes, and the money isn’t hidden 
away anywhere. Can he be deep enough 
to have destroyed that waistcoat, I 
wonder ? He’d got a red woolen one 
on this morning; perhaps he’s got the 
yellow-striped one under it.” 

Mr. Grimstone brushed the dust and 
cobwebs off his clothes, washed his 
hands in a greasy wooden bowl of scald- 
ing water which the old woman brought 
him, and then sat down before the fire, 
picking his teeth thoughtfully, and with 
his eyebrows set in a reflective frown 
over his small gray eyes. 

“Ijdon’tlike to be beat,” he thought; 
“I don’t like to be beat.” He doubted 
if any magistrate would grant him a 
warrant against the Softy upon the 
strength of the evidence in his pos- 
session — the blood-stained button by 
Crosby of Birmingham ; and without a 
warrant he could not search for the 
notes upon the i)erson of the man he 
suspected. He had sounded all the 
out-door servants at Mellish, but had 
been able to discover nothing that 
threw any light upon the movements of 
Stephen Hargraves on the night of the 
murder. No one remembered having 
seen him; no one had been on the 
southern side of the wood that night. 
One of the lads had passed the north 
lodge on his way from the high road to 
the stables about the time at which 
Aurora had heard the shot fired in the 


AURORA FLOYD. 


wood, and had seen a light burning in 
the lower window ; but this, of course, 
proved nothing either one way or the 
other. 

“ If we could find the money upon 
thought Mr. Grimstone, “ it would 
be pretty strong proof of the robbery ; 
and if we find the waistcoat, off which 
that button came, in his possession, it 
wouldn’t be bad evidence of the murder, 
putting the two things together; but 
we shall have to keep a preshus sharp 
watch upon my friend while we hunt up 
what we want, or I’m blest if he won’t 
give us the slip, and be off to Liverpool 
and out of the country before we know 
W'here we are.” 

Now the truth of the matter is, that 
Mr. Joseph Grimstone was not, per- 
haps, acting quite so conscientiously in 
this business as he might have done, had 
the love of justice in the abstract, and 
without any relation to sublunary re- 
ward, been the ruling principle of his 
life. He might have had any help he 
pleased from the Doncaster constabu- 
lary, had he chosen to confide in the 
members of that force ; but as a very 
knowing individual who owns a three- 
year old which he has reason to believe 
“a flyer,” is apt to keep the capabili- 
ties of his horse a secret from his friends 
and the sporting public, while he puts a 
“pot” of money upon the animal at 
enormous odds, so Mr. Grimstone de- 
sired to keep his information to himself 
until it should have brought Iflm its 
golden fruit, in the shape of a small re- 
ward from Government and a large one 
from John Mellish. 

The detective had reason to know 
that the Dogberrys of Doncaster, mis- 
led by a duplicate of that very letter 
which had first aroused the attention of 
{Scotland Yard, were on the wrong scent, 
as he had been at first ; and he was very 
well content to leave them where they 
were. 

“No,” he thought, “it’s a critical 
game ; but I’ll play it single-handed, 
or, at least, with no one better than 
Tom Chivers to help me through with 
it; and a ten-pound note will satisfy 
him, if we win the day.” 

Pondering thus, Mr. Grimstone de- 
parted, after having recompensed the 
landlady for her civility by a donation 
which the old woman considered princely, i 
16 


257 

He had entirely deluded her as to the 
object of his search by telling her that 
he was a lawyer’s clerk, commissioned 
by his employer to hunt for a codicil 
which had been hidden somewhere in 
that house by an old man who had lived 
in it in the year 1183 ; and he had con- 
trived, in the course of conversation, to 
draw from the old woman, who was of a 
garrulous turn, all that she had to tell 
about the Softy. 

It was not much, certainly. Mr. 
Hargraves had never changed a bank- 
note with her knowledge. He had paid 
for his bit of victuals as he had it, but 
had not spent a shilling a day. As to 
bank-notes, it wasn’t at all likely that 
he had any of them ; for he was always 
complaining that he was very poor, and 
that his little bit of savings, scraped to- 
gether out of his wages, wouldn’t last 
him long. 

“ This Hargraves is a precious deep 
’un, for all they call him soft,” thought 
Mr. Grimstone, as he left the lodging- 
house, and walked slowly towards the 
sporting public at which he had left the 
Softy under the watchful eye of Mr. 
Tom Chivers. “I’ve often heard say 
that these half-witted chaps have more 
cunning in their little fingers than a 
better man has in the whole of his com- 
position. Another man would never 
have been able to stand against the 
temptation of changing one of those 
notes ; or would have gone about wear- 
ing that identical waistcoat ; or would 
have made a bolt of it the day after the 
murder ; or tried on something or an- 
other that would have blown the gafi* 
upon him ; but not your Softy ! He 
hides the notes and he hides the waist- 
coat, and then he laughs in his sleeve at 
those that want him, and sits drinking 
his beer as comfortably as you please.” 

Pondering thus, the detective made 
his way to the public-house in which he 
had left Mr. Stephen Hargraves. He 
ordered a glass of brandy-and-water at 
the bar, and walked into the taproom, 
expecting to see the Softy still brooding 
sullenly over his drink, still guarded by 
the apparently indifferent eye of Mr. 
Chivers. But it was not so. The tap- 
room was empty ; and upon making 
cautious inquiries, Mr. Grimstone ascer- 
tained that the Softy and his watcher 
had been gone for upwards of an hour. 


AURORA FLOYD. 


258 

Mr. Chivers had been forbidden to let 
his charge out of sight under any cir- 
cumstances whatever, except indeed if 
tlm Softy had turned homewards while 
Mr. Grimstone was employed in ran- 
sacking his domicile, in which event 
Tom was to have slipped on a few paces 
before him, and given warning to his 
chief. Wherever Stephen Hargraves 
went, Mr. Thomas Chivers was to fol- 
low him ; but he was, above all, to act 
in such a manner as tvould effectually 
prevent any suspicion arising in the 
Softy’s mind as to the fact that he was 
followed. " 

It will be seen, therefore, that poor 
Chivers had no very easy task to per- 
form, and it has been seen that he had 
heretofore contrived to perform it pretty 
skilfully. If Stephen Hargraves sat 
boozing in a taproom half the day, Mr. 
Chivers was also to booze, or to make a 
j)retense of boozing, for the same length 
of time. If the Softy showed a dispo- 
sition to be social, and gave his com- 
panion any opportunity of getting friendly 
with him, the detective’s underling'was 
to employ his utmost skill and discretion 
in availing himself of that golden chance. 
It is a wondrous provision of Providence 
that the treachery which would be hate- 
ful and horrible in any other man, is 
considered perfectly legimate in the man 
who is employed to hunt out a murderer 
or a thief. The vile instruments which 
the criminal employed against his un- 
suspecting victim are in due time used 
against himself; and the wretch who 
laughed at the poor unsuspecting dupe 
who was trapped to his destruction by 
Ilia lies, is caught in his turn by some 
shallow deceit or pitifully hackneyed de- 
vice of the paid spy, who has been bribed 
to lure him to his doom. For the out- 
law of society, the code of honor is null 
and void. His existence is a perpetual 
jjeril to innocent women and honorable 
men ; and the detective who beguiles 
him to his end does such a service to so- 
ciety as must doubtless counterbalance 
the treachery of the means by which it 
is done. The days of Jonathan Wild 
and his compeers are over, and the thief- 
taker no longer begins life as a tliief. 
The detective officer is as honest as he 
is intrepid and astute, and it is not his 
own fault if the dirty nature of all crime 
gives him now and then dirty work to do. 


But Mr. Stephen Hargraves did not 
give the opportunity for which Tom 
Chivers had been bidden to lie in wait ; 
he sat sullen, silent, stupid, unapproacha- 
ble ; and as Tom’s orders were not to 
force himself upon his companion, he 
was hiin to abandon all thought of worm- 
ing himself into the Softy’s good graces. 
This made, the task of watching him all 
the more difficult. It is not such a very 
easy matter to follow a man without 
seeming to follow him. 

It was market-day too, and the town 
was crowded with noisy country people. 
Mr. Grimstone suddenly remembered 
this, and the recollection by no means 
added to his peace of mind. 

“ Chivers never did sell me,” he 
thought, “ and surely he won’t do it 
now. I dare say they’re safe enough, 
for the matter of that, in some other 
public. I’ll slip out and look after 
them.” 

Mr. Grimstone had, as I have said, 
already made himself acquainted with all 
the haunts affected by the Softy. It did 
not take him long, therefore, to look in 
at the three or four public-houses where 
Steeve Hargraves was likely to be found, 
and to discover that he was not there. 

“ He’s slouching about the town some- 
where or other, I dare say,” thought the 
detective, “ with my mate close upon his 
heels. I’ll stroll towards the market- 
place, and see if I can find them any- 
where that way.” 

Mr. -Grimstone turned out of the by- 
street in which he had been walking, 
into a narrow alley leading to the broad 
open square upon which the market- 
place stands. 

The detective went his way in a leis 
urely manner, with his hands in his 
pockets and a cigar in his mouth. He 
had perfect confidence in Mr. Thomas 
Chivers, and the crowded state of tfcC 
market-place and its neighborhood in no 
way weakened his sense of security. 

“ Chivers will stick to him through 
thick and thin,” he thought ; “ he’d 
keep an eye upon his man if he had to 
look after him between Charing Cross 
and Whitehall when the Queen was 
going to open Parliament. He’s not 
the man to be flummuxed by a crowd in 
a country market-place.” 

Serene in this sense of security, Mr. 
Grimstone amused himself by looking 


AUEORA FLOYD. 


about him, with an expression of some- 
what supercilious wonder, at the man- 
ners and customs of those indigense who, 
upon market-day, make their inroad into 
the quiet town. He paused upon the 
edge of a little sunken flight of worn 
steps leading down to the stage-door of 
the theatre, and read the fragments of 
old bills mouldering upon the. door-posts 
and lintel. There were glowing an- 
nouncements of dramatic performances 
that had long ago taken place ; and 
above the rain and mud-stained relics 
of the past, in bold black lettering, ap- 
peared the record of a drama as terrible 
as any that had ever been enacted in 
that provincial theatre. The bill-sticker 
had posted the announcement of the re- 
ward offered by John Hellish for the 
discovery of the murderer in every 
available spot, and had not forgotten this 
position, which commanded one of the 
entrances to the market-place. 

It’s a wonder to me,” muttered Mr. 
Grimstone, “ that that blessed bill 
shouldn’t have opened the eyes of these 
Doncaster noodles. But I dare say 
they think it’s a blind ; a planned thing 
to throw ’em off the scent their clever 
noses are sticking to so determined. If 
I can get my man before they open their 
eyes, I shall have such a haul as I 
haven’t met with lately.” 

Musing thus pleasantly, Mr. Grim*- 
stone turned his back upon the theatre, 
and crossed over to the market. Within 
the building the clamor of buying and 
selling was at its height : noisy coun* 
trymen chaffering in their northern 
upon the value and merits of poultry, 
butter, and eggs ; dealers in butchers’ 
meat bewildering themselves in the en- 
deavor to simultaneously satisfy the 
demands of half-a-dozen sharp and bar- 
gain-loving housekeepers ; while from 
without there came a confused clatter of 
other merchants and other customers, 
clamoring and hustling round the stalls 
of greengrocers, and the- slimy barrows 
of blue-jacketed fish-mongers. In the 
midst of all this bustle and confusion, 
Mr. Grimstone came suddenly upon his 
trusted ally, pale, terror-stricken, and — 
ALONE ! 

The detective’s mind was not slow to 
gras]) the full force of the situation. 

“You’ve lost him I” he whispered 
fiercely, sei.'fiug the unfortunate Mr. 


259 

Chivers by the collar, and pinning him 
as securely as if he had serious thoughts 
of making him a permanent fixture upon 
the stone-flags of the market-place. 
“You’ve lost him, Tom Chivers !” he con- 
tinued, hoarse with agitation. “ You’ve 
lost the party that I told you was worth 
more to me than any other party I ever 
gave you the office for. You’ve lost me 
tbe best chance I’ve ever had since I’ve 
been in Scotland Yard, and yourself too ; 
for I should have acted liberal by you,'' 
added the detective, apparently oblivious 
of that morning’s reverie, in which he 
had pre-determined offering his assistant 
ten pounds, in satisfaction of all his 
claims, — “ I should have acted very lib- 
eral by you, Tom. But what’s the use 
of standing jawing here? You come 
along with me ; you can tell me how it 
happened as we go.” 

With his powerful grasp still on the 
underling’s collar,- Mr. Grimstone walk- 
ed out of the market-place, neither look- 
ing to the right nor the lefi, though many 
a pair of rustic eyes opened to their 
widest as he passed, attracted no doubt 
by the rapidity of his pace and the obvi- 
ous determination of his manner. Per- 
haps those rustic bystanders thought that 
the stern-looking gentleman in the black 
frock-coat had arrested the shabby little 
man in the act of picking his pocket, 
and was bearing him off to deliver him 
straight into the hands of justice. 

Mr. Grimstone released his grasp 
when he and his companion had got 
clear of the market-place. - 

“Now,” he said breathless, but not 
slackening his pace, — “now I suppose 
you can tell me how you come to make 
such an” — inadmissible adjective — “fool 
of yourself? Never you mind where 
I’m goin’. I’m goin to the railway- 
station. Never you mind why I’m 
goin’ there. You’d guess why if you 
weren’t a fool. Now tell me all about 
it, can’t you ?” 

“ It ain’t much to tell,” the humble 
follower gasped, his respiratory func- 
tions sadly tried by the pace at which 
his superior went over the ground. 
“ It ain’t much. I followed your in- 
structions faithful. I tried, artful and 
quiet-like, to make acquaintance with 
him ; but that warn’t a bit o’ good, 
lie was as surly as a bull-terrier, so I 
I didn’t force him to it j but kept an eye 


AURORA FLOYD. 


260 

upon him, and let out before him as it 
was racin’ business as had brought me 
to Doncaster, and as I was here to look 
after a horse, what was in trainin’ a few 
miles off, for a gent in London ; and 
when he left the public, I went after 
him, but not conspikiwoiis. But I 
think from that minute he was fly, for 
he didn’t go three steps without lookin’ 
back, and he led me such a chase as 
made my legs tremble under me, which 
they trembles at this moment ; and then 
he gets me into the market-place, and 
he dodges here, and he dodges there, 
and wherever the Crowd’S thickest he 
dodges most, till he gets me at last in 
among a ring of market-people round a 
couple a coves a millin’ with each other, 
and there I loses him. And I’ve been 
in and out the market, and here and 
there, until I’m fit to drop, but it ain’t 
no good ; and you’ve no call to lay the 
blame on me, for mortal man couldn’t 
have done more.” 

Mr. Chivers wiped the perspiration 
from his face in testimony of his exer- 
tions. Dirty little streams were rolling 
down his forehead and trickling upon 
his poor faded cheeks. He mopped up 
these evidences of his fatigue with a 
red-cotton handkerchief, and gave a 
deprecatory sigh. 

“If there’s anybody to blame on, it 
ain’t me,” he said mildly. “I said all 
along you ought to have had help, A 
man as is on his own ground, and 
knows his own ground, is more than a 
match for one cove, however hard he 
may work.” 

The detective turned fiercely upon 
his meek dependent. ' 

“ Who’s blaming you ?” he cried im- 
patiently. “ I wouldn’t cry out before 
I was hurt, if I were you.” 

They had reached the railway-station 
by this time. 

“ How long is it since you missed 
him ?” asked Mr. Grimstone of the 
l)enitent Chivers. 

“ Three-quarters of a hour, or it may 
be a hour,” Tom added doubtfully. 

“I dare say it is an hour,” muttered 
the detective. 

He walked straight to one of the 
chief officials, and asked what trains had 
left within the last hour. 

“ Two, both market trains: one east- 


ward, Selby way ; the other for Penis- 
tone, and the intervening stations.”^ 

The detective looked at the time- 
table, running his thumb-nail along the' 
names of the stations. 

“ That train will reach Penistone in 
time to catch the Liverpool train, won’t 
it ?” he asked. 

“Just about.” 

“ What time did it go ?” 

“ The Penistone train ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ About half an hour ago ; at 2.30.” 

The clocks had struck three as Mr. 
Grimstone made his way to the station. 

“Half an hour ago,” muttered the 
detective. “ He’d’have had ample time 
to catch the train after giving Chivers 
the slip.” 

He questioned the guards and porters 
as to whether any of them had seen a 
man answering to the description of the 
Softy : a white-faced, hump-backed 
fellow, in corduroys and a fustian jacket ; 
and even penetrated into the ticket- 
clerk’s office to ask the same question. 

No ; none of them had seen Mr. 
Stephen Hargraves. Two or three of 
them recognized him by the detective’s 
description, and asked if it was one of 
the stable-men from Mellish Park that 
the gentlemen was inquiring after. Mr. 
Grimstone rather evaded any direct 
answer to this question. Secrecy was, 
as we know, the principle upon which 
he conducted his affairs. 

“He may have contrived to give ’em 
all the slip,” he said confidentially to 
his faithful but dispirited ally. “He 
may have got off without any of ’em 
seeing him. He’s got the money about 
him, I’m all but certain of that ; and 
his game is to get off to Liverpool. 
His inquiries after the trains yesterday 
proves that. Now I might telegraph, 
and have him stopped at Liverpool — 
supposing him to have given us dll the 
slip, and gone off there — if I like to let 
others into the- game ; but I don’t. I’ll 
play to win or lose ; but I’ll play single- 
handed. He may try another dodge, 
and get off Hull way by the canal-boats 
that the market-people use, and then 
slip across to Hamborough, or some- 
thing of that sort ; but that ain’t likely, 
— these fellows always go one way. It 
seems as if the minute a man has taken 


AURORA FLOYD. 


another man’s life, or forged his name, 
or embezzled his money, his ideas gets 
fixed in one groove, and never can soar 
higher than Liverpool and the Ameri- 
can packet.” 

Mr. Chivers listened rc^spectfully to 
his patron’s communications. He was 
very well pleased to see the serenity of 
his employer’s mind gradually return- 
ing. 

“ ^^ow, I’ll tell you what, Tom,” said 
Mr. Grimstone. “ If this chap has 
given us the slip, why he’s given us the 
slip, and he’s got a start of us, which 
we shan’t be able to pick up till half- 
past ten o’clock to-night, when there’s 
a train that’ll take' us to Liverpool. 
If he hasnH given us the slip, there’s 
only one way he can leave Doncaster, 
and that’s by this station ; so you stay 
here patient and quiet till you see me, 
or hear from me. If he is in Doncas- 
ter, I’m jiggered if I don’t find him.” 

With which powerful asseveration 
Mr. Grimstone walked away, leaving his 
scout to keep watch for the possible 
coming of the Softy. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

TALBOT BULSTRODE MAKES ATONEMENT 
FOR THE PAST. 

John Mellish and Talbot Bulstrode 
walked to and fro upon the lawn before 
the drawing-room windows on that after- 
noon on which the detective and his 
underling lost sight of Stephen Har- 
graves. It was a dreary time, this 
period of watching and waiting, of un- 
certainty and apprehension ; and poor 
John Mellish chafed bitterly under the 
burden which he had to bear. 

Now that his friend’s common sense 
had come to his relief, and that a few 
plain out-spoken sentences had dispersed 
the terrible cloud of mystery, now that 
he himself was fully assured of his wife’s 
innocence, he had no patience with the 
stupid country-people who held them- 
selves aloof from the woman he loved. 
He wanted to go out and do battle for 
his slandered wife ; to hurl back every 
base suspicion into the faces that had 
scowled upon his idolized Aurora. How 


261 

could they dare, these foul-minded slan- 
derers, to harbor one base thought 
against the purest, the most perfect of 
women ? Mr. Mellish of course quite 
forgot that he, the rightful defender of 
all this perfection, had suffered his mind 
to be for a time obscured beneath the 
black shadow of that vile suspicion. 

He hated the old friends of his youth 
for their base avoidance of him ; the 
servants of his household for a half- 
doubtful, half-solemn expression of face, 
which he knew had relation to that 
growing suspicion, that horrible suspi- 
cion, which seemed to grow stronger 
with every hour. He broke out into a 
storm of rage with the gray-haired 
butler, who had carried him pick-a-back 
in his infancy, because the faithful 
retainer tried to hold back certain news- 
papers which contained dark allusions to 
the M.ellish mystery. 

“Who told you I didn’t want the 
Manchester Guardian, Jarvis?” he 
cried fiercely ; “ who gave you the right 
to dictate what I’m to' read or what I’m 
to leave unread ? I do want to-day’s 
Guardian; to-day’s, and yesterday’s, 
and to-morrow’s and every other news- 
paper that comes into this house ! I 
won’t have them overhauled by you, or 
any one, to see whether they’re pleasant 
reading or not, before they’re brought 
to me. Do you think Tm afraid of any 
thing these penny-a-liner fellows can 
write ?” roared the young squire, strik- 
ing his open hand upon the table at 
which he sat. “Let them write their 
best or their worst of me. But let 
them write one word that can be twisted 
into an insinuation upon the purest and 
truest woman in all Christendom, and, 
by the heaven above me. I’ll give them 
such a thrashing — penny-a-liners, print- 
ers, publishers, and every man-Jack of 
them — as shall make them remember the 
business to the last hour of their lives !” 

Mr. Mellish said all this in despite of 
the restraining presence of Talbot Bul- 
strode. Indeed, the young member for 
Penruthy had by no means a pleasant 
time of it during those few days of 
anxiety and suspense. A keeper set to 
watch over a hearty young jungle-tiger, 
and bidden to prevent the noble animal 
from committing any imprudence, might 
have found his work little harder than 
that which Mr. Bulstrode did, patiently 


262 


AUEORA FLOYD. 


nnd uncomplainingly, for pure friend- 
ship’s sake. 

John Hellish roamed about in the 
custody of his friendly keeper, with his 
short auburn hair tumbled into a feverish- 
looking mass, like a field of ripening 
corn that had been beaten by a summer 
hurricane, his cheeks sunken and hag- 
gard, and bristling yellow stubble upon 
his chin. I dare say he had made a vow 
neither to shave nor be shaven until the 
murderer of James Conyers should be 
found. He clung desperately to Talbot 
jBulstrode, but he clung with still 
wilder desperation to the detective, the 
professional criminal-huncCr, who had in 
a manner tacitly pledged himself to the 
discovery of the real homicide. 

All through the fitful August day, 
now hot and still, now overclouded and 
showery, the master of Hellish Park 
went hither and thither, — now sitting in 
his study ; now roaming out bn the 
lawn ; now pacing up and down the 
drawing-room, displacing, disarranging, 
and overturning the pretty furniture ; 
now wandering up and down the stair- 
case, lolling on the landing-places, and 
patroling the corridor outside the rooms 
in which Lucy and Aurora sat together 
making a show of employing themselves, 
but only waiting, waiting, waiting, for 
the hoped-for end. 

Poor John scarcely cared to meet 
that dearly-loved wife ; for the great 
earnest eyes that looked in his face 
always asked the same question so 
plainly, — always appealed so piteously 
for the answer that could not be given. 

It was a weary and bitter time. I 
wonder, as I write of it, when I think 
of a quiet Somersetshire household in 
which a dreadful deed was done, — the 
secret of which has never yet been 
brought to light, and perhaps never will 
be revealed until the Day of Judgment, 
— what must have been suffered by each 
member of that family ? What slow 
agonies, what ever-increasing tortures, 
while that cruel mystery was the “sen- 
sation” topic of conversation in a thou- 
sand happy home-circles, in a thousand 
tavern-parlors and pleasant club-rooms ! 
— a common and ever interesting topic, 
by means of which travelers in first-class 
railway-carriages might break down the 
ceremonial icebergs which surrounded 
each traveling Englishman, and grow 


friendly and confidential ; a safe topic 
upon which even tacit enemies might 
talk pleasantly without fear of wrecking 
themselves upon hidden rocks of personal 
insinuation. God help that household, 
or any such household, through the weary 
time of waiting which it may please Him 
to appoint, until that day in which it 
shall be His good pleasure to reveal the 
truth I God help all patient creatures 
laboring under the burden of an unjust 
suspicion, and support them unto the 
end ! 

John Hellish chafed and fretted him- 
self ceaselessly all through that August 
day at the non-appearance of the detec- 
tive. Why didn’t he come ? He had 
promised to bring or send them news 
of his proceedings. Talbot in vain 
assured his friend that Hr. Grimstone 
was no doubt hard at work ; that such 
a discovery as he had to make was not 
to be made in a day; and that Hr. 
Hellish had nothing to do but to make 
himself as comfortable as he could, and 
Wait quietly for the event he desired so 
eagerly. 

“ I should not say this to you, John,” 
Hr. Bulstrode said, by-and-by, “if I did 
not believe — as I know this man Grim- 
stone believes — that we are upon the right 
track, and are pretty sure to bring tho 
crime home to the wretch who com- 
mitted it. You can do nothing but be 
patient, and wait the result of Grim- 
stone’s labors.” 

“Yes,” cried John Hellish : “and iu 
the mean time all these people are to 
say cruel things of my darling, and keep 
aloof from her, and — No, I can^t bear 
it, Talbot; I can’t bear it. I’ll turn 
my back upon this confounded place ; 
I’ll sell it; I’ll burn it down ; I’ll — I'll 
do any thing to get away, and take my 
precious one from the wretches who 
have slandered her I” 

“ That you shall not do, John Hellish,” 
exclaimed Talbot Bulstrode, “until the 
murderer of James Conyers has been 
discovered. Go away, then, as soon as 
you like ; for the associations of this 
place cannot be otherwise than disa- 
greeable to you — for a time, at least. 
But until the truth is out, you must 
remain here. If there is any foul sus- 
picion against Aurora, her presence 
here will best give the lie to that sus- 
picion. It was her hurried journey to 


AURORA FLOYD. 


London which first set people talking 
of her, I dare say,” added Mr. Bul- 
strode, who was of coarse entirely igno- 
rant of the fact that an anonymous 
letter from Mrs. Powell had originally 
aroused the suspicions of the Doncaster 
constabulary. 

So through the long summer’s day 
Talbot reasoned with and comforted his 
friend, never growing weary of his task, 
never for one moment losing sight of 
the interests of Aurora Mellish and her 
husl)and. 

J^erhaps this was a self-imposed pen- 
alty for the wrong which he had done 
the banker’s daughter long ago in the 
dim starlit chamber at Felden. If it 
was so., he did penance very cheerfully. 

“ Heaven knows how gladly I would 
do her a service,” he thought; “her 
life has been a troubled one, in spite of 
her father’s thousands. Thank Heaven, 
iny poor little Lucy has never been 
forced into playing the heroine of a 
tragedy like this ; thank Heaven, my 
poor little darling’s life flows evenly and 
placidly in a smooth channel.” 

He could not but reflect with some- 
thing of a shudder that it might have 
been his wife whose history was being 
canvassed throughout the West Riding. 
He could not be otherwise than pleased 
to' remember that the name of the 
woman he had chosen had never gone 
beydnd the holy eircle of her own home, 
to be the common talk among strangers. 

There are things which are utterly 
unendurable to some people, but which 
are not at all terrible in the eyes of 
others. John Mellish, secure in his own 
belief in his wife’s innocence, would 
have been content to carry her away 
with him, after razing the home of his 
forefathers to the ground, and defying 
all Y'orkshire to find flaw or speck 
upon her fair fame. But Talbot Bul- 
strode would have gone mad with the 
agony of the thought that common 
tongues had defiled the name he loved, 
and would, in no after-triumph of his 
wife’s innocence, have been able to for- 
get or to recover from the torture of 
that unendurable agony. There are peo- 
ple who cannot forget, and Talbot Bul- 
strode was one of them. He had never 
forgotten his Christmas agony at Felden 
Woods, and the after-struggle at Bui- 


263 

strode Castle; nor did he ever hope to 
forget it. The happiness of the present, 
pure and unalloyed though it was, could 
not annihilate the anguish of the past. 
Thai stood alone — so many months, 
weeks, days, and hours of unutterable 
misery riven away from the rest of his 
life, to remain forever a stony memorial 
upon the smooth plains of the past. 

Archibald Martin Floyd sat with his 
daughter and Lucy in Mrs. Mellish’s 
morning-room, the pleasantest chamber 
for many reasons, but chiefly because it 
was removed from the bustle of the 
house, and from the chance of unwel- 
come intrusion. All the troubles of 
that household had been made light of 
in the presence of the old man, and no 
word had been dropped before him 
which could give him reason to guess 
that his only child had been suspected 
of the most fearful crime that man or 
woman can commit. But Archibald 
Floyd was not easily to be deceived 
where his daughter’s happiness was in 
question ; he had watched that beauti- 
ful face, whose ever-varying expression 
was its highest charm, so long and ear- 
nestly, as to have grown familiar with 
its every look. No shadow upon the 
brightness of his daughter’s beauty could 
possibly escape the old man’s eyes, dim 
as they may have grown for the figures 
in his banking-book. It was Aurora’s 
business, therefore, to sit by her father’s 
side in the pleasant morning-room, to 
talk to him and amuse him; while John 
rambled hither and thither, and made 
himself otherwise tiresome to his patient 
companion, Talbot Bulstrode. Mrs. 
Mellish repeated to her father again and 
again that there was no cause for un- 
easiness ; they were merely anxious — 
naturally anxious — that the guilty man 
should be found and brought to justice ; 
nothing more. 

The banker accepted this explanation 
of his daughter’s pale face very quietly ; 
but he was not the less anxious — anxious 
he scarcely knew why, but with the 
shadow of a dark cloud hanging over 
him that was not to be driven away. 

Thus the long August day wore itself 
out, and the low sun — blazing a lurid 
red behind the trees in Mellish Wood, 
until it made that pool beside which the 
murdered man had fallen seem a pool 


264 


AURORA FLOYD. 


of blood — pjave warning that one weary 
day of watching and suspense was nearly 
done. 

John Hellish, far too restless to sit 
long at dessert, had roamed out upon 
the lawn, still attended by his indefatiga- 
ble keeper, Talbot Bulstrode, and em- 
ployed himself in pacing up and down 
the smooth grass amid Mr. Dawson^s 
tlower-beds, looking always towards the 
pathway that led to the house, and 
breathing suppressed anathemas against 
the dilatory detective. 

“One day nearly gone, thank Heaven, 
Talbot I” he said, with an impatient 
sigh. “Will to-morrov/ bring us no 
nearer to what we want, I wonder ? 
What if it should go on like this for 
long ? what if it should go on forever, 
until Aurora and I go mad with this 
wretched anxiety and suspense ? Yes, 
I know you think me a fool and a cow- 
ard, Talbot Bulstrode ; but I can’t bear 
it quietly, I tell you I can’t. I know 
there are some people who can shut 
themselves up with their troubles, and 
sit down quietly and suffer without a 
groan ; but I can’t. I must cry out 
when I am tortured, or I should dash 
my 'brains out against the first wall I 
came to, and make an end of it. To 
think that any body should suspect my 
darling I to think that they should be- 
lieve her to be — ” 

“ To think that you should have be- 
lieved it, John !” said Mr. Bulstrode 
gravely. 

“Ah, there’s the cruellest stab of all,” 
cried John ; “ if /, — I who know her, 
and love her, and believe in her as man 
never yet believed in woman, — if /could 
have been bewildered and maddened by 
that horrible chain of cruel circum- 
stances, every one of which pointed — 
Heaven help me I — at her I — if / could 
be deluded by these things until my 
brain reeled, and I went nearly mad 
with doubting my own dearest love, 
wdiat may strangers think — strangers 
who neither know nor love her, but who 
are only too ready to believe any thing 
unnaturally infamous ? Talbot, I wonH 
endure this any longer. I’ll ride into 
Doncaster and see this man G’rimstone. 
He mud have done some good to-day. 
I’ll go at once.” 

Mr. Hellish would have walked 


straight off to the stables ; but Talbot 
Bulstrode caught him by the arm. 

“You may miss the man on the 
road, John,” he said. “ He came last 
night after dark, and may come as late 
to-night. There’s no knowing whether 
he’ll come by the road, or the short cut 
across the fields. You’re as likely to 
miss him as not.” 

Mr. Mellish hesitated. 

“ He mayn’t come at all to-night,” he 
said ; “ and I tell you I can’t bear this 
suspense.” 

“ Let me ride into Doncaster, then, 
John,” urged Talbot; “and you stay 
here to receive Grimstoue if he- should 
come.” 

Mr. Mellish was considerably mollified 
by this proposition. 

“Will you ride into the town, Tal- 
bot?” he said. “Upon ray wo**d, it’s 
very kind of you to propose it. I 
shouldn’t like to miss this man upon 
any account; but at the same time I 
don’t feel inclined to w'ait for the chance 
of his coming or staying away.^ I’m 
afraid I’m a great nuisance to you, Bul- 
strode.” 

“ Not a bit of it,” answered Talbot, 
with a smile. 

Perhaps he smiled involuntarily at 
the notion of how little John Mellish 
knew what a nuisance he had been 
through that weary day. 

“ I’ll go with very great pleasure, 
John,” he said, “ if you’ll tell them to 
saddle a horse for me.” 

“ To be sure ; you shall have Red 
Rover, my covert hack. We’ll go round 
to the stables, and see about him at 
once.” 

The truth of the matter is, Talbot 
Bulstrode was very well pleased to hunt 
up the detective himself, rather than that 
John Mellish should execute that errand 
in person ; for it would have been about 
as easy for the young squire to have 
translated a number of the Sporting 
Magazine into Porsonian Greek, as to 
have kept a secret for half an hour, how- 
ev-er earnestly entreated, or however 
conscientiously determined to do so. 

Mr. Bulstrode had made it his parti- 
cular business^ therefore, during the 
whole of that day, to keep his friend as 
much as possible out of the way of ever}’ 
living creature, fully aware that Mr. 


AURORA FLOYD. 


Mellish’s manner would most certainly 
betray him to the least observant eyes 
that might chance to fall upon him. 

Red Rover was saddled, and, after 
twenty loudly-whispered injunctions from 
John, Talbot Bulstrode rode away in 
the evening sunlight. The nearest way 
from the stables to the high road took 
him past the north lodge. It had been 
shut up since the day of the trainer’s 
funeral, such furniture as it contained 
left to become a prey to moths and rats; 
for the Mellish servants were a great 
deal too superstitiously impressed with 
the story of the murder to dream of re- 
admitting those goods and chattels 
which had been selected for Mr. Con- 
yers’ accommodation, to the garrets 
whence they had been taken. The door 
had been locked, therefore, and the key 
given to Dawson the gardener, who was 
to be once more free to use the place as 
a storehouse for roots and matting, su- 
perannuated cucumber-frames, and crip- 
pled garden-tools. 

The place looked dreary enough, 
though the low sun made a gorgeous 
illumination upon one of the latticed 
windows that faced the crimson west, 
and though the last leaves of the roses 
were still lying upon the long grass in 
the patch of garden before the door, out 
of which Mr. Conyers had gone to his 
last resting-place. One of the stable- 
boys had accompanied Mr. Bulstrode to 
the lodge in order to open the rusty iron 
gates, which hung loosely on their 
hinges, and were never locked. 

Talbot rode at a brisk pace into Don- 
caster, never drawing rein until he 
reached the little inn at which the de- 
tective had taken up hiS quarters. Mr. 
Grimstone had been snatching a hasty 
refreshment, after a weary and useless 
perambulation about the town, and came 
out with his mouth full to speak to Mr. 
Bulstrode. But he took very good-care 
not to confess that since three o’clock 
that day neither he nor his ally had seen 
or heard of Mr. Stephen Hargraves, or 
that he was actually no nearer the dis- 
covery of the murderer than he had been 
at eleven o’clock upon the previous 
night, when he had discovered the ori- 
ginal proprietor of the fancy waistcoat, 
with buttons by Crosby, Birmingham, 
in the person of Dawson the gardener. 

“I’m not losing any time, sir,” he 


265 

said, in answer to Talbot’s inquiries ; 
“ my sort of work’s quiet work, and 
don’t make no show till it’s done. I’ve 
reason to think the man we want is in 
Doncaster ; so I stick in Doncaster, and 
mean to, till I lay my hand upon him ; 
unless I should get information as would 
point further off. Tell Mr. Mellish I’m 
doing my duty, sir, and doing it con- 
scientious ; and that I shall neither eat 
nor drink nor sleep more than just as 
much as’ll keep human nature together, 
until I’ve done wdiat I’ve set my mind 
on doing.” 

“But you’ve discovered nothing fresh, 
then ?” said Talbot ; “ you’ve nothing 
new to tell me ?” 

“ Whatever I’ve discovered is neither 
here nor there yet awhile, sir,” answered 
the detective vaguely. “ You keep your 
heart up, and tell Mr. Mellish to keep 
his heart up, and trust in me.” 

Talbot Bulstrode was obliged to be 
content with this rather doubtful comfort. 
It was not much, certainly ; but he de- 
termined to make the best of it to John 
Mellish. 

He rode out of Doncaster, past the 
“ Reindeer” and the white-fronted houses 
of the wealthier citizens ofthat prosperous 
borough, and away upon the smooth 
high road. The faint shimmer of the 
pale early moonlight lit up the tree-tops 
to right and left of him, as he left the 
suburb behind, and made the road ghostly 
beneath his horse’s feet. He was in no 
very hopeful humor after his interview 
with Mr. Grimstone, and he knew that 
hungry-eyed members of the Doncaster 
constabulary were keeping stealthy watch 
upon every creature in the Mellish house- 
hold, and that the slanderous tongues of 
a greedy public were swelling into a 
loud and ominous murmur against the 
wife John loved. Every hour, every 
moment, was of vital importance. A 
hundred perils menaced them on every 
side. What might they not have to 
dread from eager busy-bodies anxious to 
distinguish themselves, and proud of 
being the first to circulate a foul scandal 
against the lovely daughter of one of 
the richest men upon the Stock Ex- 
change ? Hayward, the coroner, and 
Lofthouse, the rector, both knew the 
secret of Aurora’s life ; and it would be 
little wonder if, looking at the trainer’s 
death by the light of that knowledge, 


266 


AURORA FLOYD. 


they believed her guilty of some share 
iu the ghastly business which had termi- 
nated the trainer’s service at Mellish 
Park. 

What if, by some horrible fatality, the 
guilty man should escape, and the truth 
never be revealed. Forever, and for- 
ever, until her blighted name should be 
written upon a tombstone, Aurora Mel- 
lish must rest under the shadow of this 
vsuspicion. Could there be any doubt 
that the sensitive and highly-strung 
nature would give way under the unen- 
durable burden ; that the proud heart 
would break beneath the undeserved 
disgrace ? What misery for her ! and 
not for her alone, but for every one who 
loved her, or had any share in her his- 
tory. Heaven pardon the selfishness 
that prompted the thought, if Talbot 
Bulstrode remembered that he would 
have some part in that bitter disgrace ; 
that his name was allied, if only remotely, 
with that of his wife’s cousin ; and that 
the shame which would make the name 
of Mellish a byword, must also cast some 
slur upon the escutcheon of the Bul- 
strodes. Sir Bernard Burke, compiling 
the romance of the county families, would 
tell that cruel story, and hinting cau- 
tiously at Aurora’s guilt, would scarcely 
fail to add, that the suspected lady’s 
cousin had married Talbot Raleigh Bul- 
strode, Esq., eldest son and heir of Sir 
J ohn W alter Raleigh Bulstrode, Baronet, 
of Bulstrode Castle, Cornwall. 

Now, although the detective had affect- 
ed a hopeful and even mysterious man- 
ner in his brief interview with Talbot, he 
had not succeeded in hoodwinking that 
gentleman, who had a vague suspicion 
that all w^as not quite right, and that 
Mr. Joseph Grimstone was by no means 
so certain of success as he pretended to 
be. 

“It’s my firm belief that this man 
Hargraves has given him the slip,” Tal- 
bot thought. “ He said something 
about believing him to- be in Doncaster, 
and then the next moment added that 
he might be further off. It’s clear, 
therefore, that Grimstone doesn’t know 
where he is ; and in that case, .it’s as 
likely as not that the man’s made off 
with his money, and wdll get away from 
England, in spite of us. If he does 
this — ” 

Mr. Bulstrode did not finish the sen- 


tence. He had reached the north lodge, 
and dismounted to open the iron gate. 
The lights of the house shone hospitably 
far away beyond the wood, and the 
voices of some men about the stable- 
gates sounded faintly in the distance ; 
but the north lodge and the neglected 
shrubbery around it ^vere as silent as the 
grave, and had a certain phantom-like 
air in the dim moonlight. 

Talbot led his horse through the gates. 
He looked up at the windows of the 
lodge as he passed, half involuntarily ; 
but he stopped with a suppressed excla- 
mation of surprise at the sight of a feeble 
glimmer, which was not the moonlight, 
in the window of that upper chamber in 
which the murdered man had slept. 
Before that exclamaiion had well-nigh 
crossed his lips, the light had disap- 
peared. 

If any one of the Mellish grooms or 
stable-boys had beheld that brief appa- 
rition, he would have incontinently taken 
to his heels, and rushed breathless to the 
stables, with a wild story of some super- 
natural horror in the north lodge ; but 
Mr. Bulstrode, being altogether of ano- 
ther mettle, walked softly on, still lead- 
ing his horse, until he was well out of 
ear-shot of any one within the lodge, 
when he stopped and tied the Red 
Rover’s bridle to a tree, and turned 
back towards the north gates, leaving the 
corn-fed covert hack cropping greedily 
at dewy hazel-twigs, and any greenmeat 
within his reach. 

The heir of Sir John Walter Raleigh 
Bulstrode crept back to the lodge almost 
as noiselessly as if he had been educated 
for Mr. Grimstone’s profession, choosing 
the grassy pathway beneath the trees 
for his cautious footsteps. As he ap- 
proached the wooden paling that shut in 
the little garden of the lodge, the light 
which had been so suddenly extinguish- 
ed reappeared behind the white curtain 
of the upper window. 

“ It’s queer 1” mused Mr. Bulstrode, 
as he watched the feeble glimmer ; “ but 
I dare say there’s nothing in it. The 
associations of this place are strong 
enough to make one attach a foolish im- 
portance to any thing connected with it. 
I think I heard John say the gardeners 
keep their tools there, and I suppose it’s 
one of them. But it’s late, too, for any 
of them to be at work.” 


AURORA FLOYD. 


267 


It had struck ten while Mr. Bulstrode 
rode homeward ; and it was more than 
unlikely that any of the Mellish servants 
would be out at such a time. 

Talbot lingered by the wicket-gate, 
irresolute as to what he should do next, 
but thoroughly determined to see the 
last of this late visitor at the north 
lodge, when the shadow of a man flitted 
across the white curtain, — a shadow even 
more weird and ungainly than such 
things are,-.-the shadow of a man with 
a humpback I 

Talbot Bulstrode uttered no cry of 
surprise ; but his heart knocked furiously 
against his ribs, and the blood rushed 
hotly to his face. He never remembered 
having seen the Softy ; but he had al- 
ways heard him described as a hump- 
backed man. There could be no doubt 
of the shadow’s identity; there could 
be still less doubt that Stephen Har- 
graves had visited that place for no good 
purpose. What could bring him there 
— to that place above all other places, 
which, if he were indeed guilty, be would 
surely most desire to avoid ? Stolid, 
semi-idiotic, as he was supposed to be, 
surely the common terrors of the lowest 
assassin, half-brute, half-Caliban, would, 
keep him away from that spot. These 
thoughts did not occupy more than those 
few moments in which the violent beat- 
ing of Talbot Bulstrode’s heart held him 
powerless to move or act ; then, push- 
ing open the gate, he rushed across the 
tiny garden, trampling recklessly upon 
the neglected flower-beds, and softly 
tried the door. It was firmly secured 
with a heavy chain and padlock. 

“ He has got in at the window, then,” 
thought Mr. Bulstrode. “ What, in 
heaven’s name, could be his motive in 
coming here ?” 

Talbot was right. The little lattice- 
window had been wrenched nearly off 
its hinges, and hung loosely among the 
tangled foliage that-surrounded it. Mr. 
Bulstrode did not hesitate a moment 
before he plunged head foremost into 
the narrow aperture through which the 
Softy must have found his way, and 
scrambled as he could into the little 
room. The lattice, strained still further, 
dropped, with a crashing noise, behind 
him ; but not soon enough to serve as a 
warning for Stephen Hargraves, who 
appeared upon Hie lowest step of the 


tiny corkscrew staircase at the same 
moment. He was carrying a tallow- 
candle in a battered tin-candlestick in 
his right hand, and he had a small bun- 
dle under his left arm. His white face 
was no whiter than usual, but he pre- 
sented an awful corpse-like appearance 
to Mr. Bulstrode, who had never seen 
him, or noticed him, before. The Softy 
recoiled, with a gesture of intense ter- 
ror as he saw Talbot ; and a box of lu- 
cifer-matches, which he had been carry- 
ing in the candlestick, rolled to the 
ground. 

“ What are you doing here ?” asked 
Mr. Bulstrode sternly; “and why did 
you come in at the window ?” 

“ I warn’t doin’ no wrong,” the Softy 
whined piteously; “and it ain’t your 
business neither,” he added, with a fee- 
ble attempt at insolence. 

“It is my business. I am Mr. Mel- 
lish’s friend and relation ; and 1 have 
reason to suspect that you are here for 
no good purpose,” answered Talbot. “ I 
insist upon knowing what you came for.” 

“ I haven’t come to steal owght, any 
how,” said Mr. Hargraves ; “ there’s 
nothing here but chairs and tables, and 
’taint loikely I’ve come arter them.” 

“ Perhaps not ; but you have come 
after something, and I insist upon know- 
ing what it is. You wouldn’t come to 
this place unless you’d a very strong 
reason for coming. What have you got 
there ?” 

Mr. Bulstrode pointed to the bundle 
carried by the Softy. Stephen Har- 
graves’ small, red-brown eyes evaded 
those of his questioner, and made be- 
lieve to mistake the direction in which 
Talbot looked. 

“ What have you got there ?” repeated 
Mr. Bulstrode ; “ you know well enough 
what I mean. What have you got there 
in that bundle under your arm ?” 

The Softy clutched convulsively at 
the dingy bundle, and glared at his 
questioner with something of the savage 
terror of some ugly animal at bay ; ex- 
cept that in his brutalized manhood, he 
was more awkward, and perhaps more 
repulsive, than the ugliest of lower 
animals. 

“ Its now'ght to you, nor to any body 
else,” he muttered sulkily. “ I suppose 
a poor chap may fetch his few bits of 
clothes without bein’ called like this ?” 


268 


AURORA FLOYD. 


“ What clothes ? Let me see the 
clothes.” 

“No, I won’t ; they’re nowght to you. 
They — it’s only an old weskit as was 
give me by one o’ th’ lads in th’ steables.” 

“ A waistcoat I” cried Mr. Bulstrode ; 
“let me see it this instant. A waistcoat 
of yours has been particularly inquired 
for, Mr. Hargraves. It’s a chocolate 
waistcoat, with yellow stripoe and brass 
buttons, unless I’m very much mistaken. 
Let me see it.” 

Talbot Bulstrode was almost breath- 
less with excitement. The Softy stared 
aghast at the description of his waistcoat, 
but he was too stupid to comprehend 
instantaneously the reason for which this 
garment was wanted. He recoiled for 
a few paces, and then made a rush to- 
wards the window ; but Talbot’s hands 
closed upon his collar, and held him as 
if in a vsce. 

“You’d better not trifle with me,” 
cried Mr. Bulstrode; “I’ve been accus- 
tomed to deal with refractory Sepoys in 
India, and I’ve had a struggle with a 
tfger before now. Show me that waist- 
coat.” 

“ I won’t I” 

“By the Heaven above us, you shall !” 

“ I won’t 1” 

The two men closed with each other 
in a hand-to-hand struggle. Powerful 
as the soldier was, he found himself more 
than matched by Stephen Hargraves, 
whose thick-set frame, broad shoulders, 
and sinewy arms were almost Herculean in 
their build. The struggle lasted for a con- 
siderable time, — or for a time that seemed 
considerable to both of the combatants ; 
but at last it drew towards its termina- 
tion, and the heir of all the Bulstrodes, 
the commander of squadrons of horse, 
the man who had done battle with blood- 
thirsty Sikhs, and ridden against the 
black mouths of Russian cannon at Bala- 
clava, felt thfit he could scarcely hope 
to hold out much longer against the 
half-witted hanger-on of the Mellish sta- 
bles. The horny fingers of the Softy 
were upon his throat, the long arms of 
the Softy were writhing round him, and 
in another moment Talbot Bulstrode lay 
upon the floor of the north lodge, with 
the Softy’s knee planted upon his heav- 
ing chest. 

Another moment, and in the dim 
moonlight — the candle had been thrown | 


down and trampled upon in the begin- 
ning of the scuffle — the heir of Bul- 
strode Castle saw Stephen Hargraves 
fumbling with his disengaged hand in 
his breast-pocket. 

One Inoment more, and Mr. Bulstrode 
heard that sharp metallic noise only as- 
sociated with the opening of a clasp- 
knife. 

“E’es,” hissed the Softy, with his hot 
breath close upon the fallen man’s cheek, 
“ you wanted t’ see th’ weskit, did you ? 
but you shan’t, for I’ll sarve you a? I 
sarved him. ’Taint loikely I’ll let you 
stand between me and two thousand 
pound.” 

Talbot Raleigh Bulstrode had a faint 
notion that a broad Sheffield blade 
flashed in the silvery moonlight ; but at 
this moment his senses grew confused 
under the iron grip of the Softy’s hand, 
and he knew little, except that there w'as 
a sudden crashing of glass behind him, 
a quick trampling of feet, and a strange 
voice roaring some seafaring oath above 
his head. The suffocating pressure was 
suddenly removed from his throat ; some 
one, or something, was hurled into a cor- 
ner of the little room ; and Mr. Bul- 
strode sprang to his feet, a trifle dazed 
and bewMIdered, but quite ready to do 
battle again. 

“ Who is it ?” he cried. 

“ It’s me,. Samuel Prodder !” answered 
the voice that had uttered that dreadful 
seafaring oath. “ You were pretty nigh 
done for, mate, when I came aboard. 
It ain’t the first time I’ve been up here 
after dark, takin’ a quiet stroll and a 
pipe, before turning in over yonder,’’ 
Mr. Prodder indicated Doncaster by a 
backward jerk of his thumb. “ I’d been 
watchin’ the light from a distance, till it 
went out suddenly five minutes ago, and 
then I came up close to see what was 
the matter. I don’t know who you are, 
or what you are, or why you’ve been 
quarreling ; but I know you’ve been 
pretty near as nigh your death to-night 
as ever that chap was in the wood.” 

“The waistcoat I” gasped Mr. Bul- 
strode ; “ let me see the waistcoat I” 

He sprang once more upon the Softy, 
who had rushed towards the door, and 
was trying to beat out the panel with 
his iron-bound clog ; but this time Mr. 
Bulstrode had a stalwart ally in the 
merchant-captain. 


AURORA 

“A bit of rope comes uncommon 
handy in these cases,” said Samuel 
Prodder; “for which reason I always 
make a point of carrying it somewhere 
about me.” 

Ke plunged up to his elbow in one 
of the capacious pockets of his tourist 
peg-tops, and produced a short coil of 
tarry rope. As he might have lashed a 
seaman to a mast in the last crisis, of a 
wreck, so he lashed Mr. Stephen Har- 
graves now, binding him right and left, 
until the struggling arms and legs, and 
writhing trunk, were fain to be still. 

“ Now^ if you want to ask him any 
questions, I make no doubt he’ll answer 
’em,” said Mr. Prodder politely. “You’ll 
find him a deal quieter after that.” 

“ I can’t thank you now,” Talbot an- 
swered hurriedly ; “ there’ll be time 
enough for that by and by.” 

“ Ay, ay, to be sure,” growled the 
captain ; “no thanks is needed where 
no thanks is due. Is there any thing 
else I can do for you ?” 

“Yes, a good deal presently; but I 
must find this waistcoat first. Where 
did he put it, I wonder? Stay, I’d 
better try and get a light. Keep your 
eye upon that man while I look for it.” 

Captain Prodder only nodded. He 
looked upon his scientific lashing of the 
Softy as the triumph of art; but he 
hovered near his prisoner in compliance 
with Talbot’s request, ready to fall upon 
him if he should make any attempt to 
stir. 

There was enough moonlight to ena- 
ble Mr. Bulstrode to find the lucifers 
and candlestick after a few minutes’ 
search. The candle was not improved 
by having been trodden upon ; but Tal- 
bot contrived to light it, and then set to 
work to look for the waistcoat. 

The bundle had rolled into a corner. 
It was tightly bound witCi a quantity of 
whip-cord, and was harder than it could 
have been had it consisted solely of the 
waistcoat. 

“ Hold the light for me while I undo 
this,” Talbot cried, thrusting the candle- 
stick into Mr. Prodder’s hand. He was 
so impatient that he could scarcely wait 
while he cut the whip-cord about the 
bundle with the Softy’s huge clasp- 
knife, which he had picked up while 
searching for the candle. 

“ I thought so,” he said, as he un- 


FLOYD. 269 

rolled the waistcoat ; “ the money’s 
here.” 

The money was there, in a small 
Russia-leather pocket-book, in which 
Aurora had given it to the murdered 
man. If there had been any confirma- 
tion needed for this fact, the savage yell 
of rage which broke from Stephen’s 
lips would have afforded that confirma- 
tion. 

“It’s the money,” cried Talbot Bul- 
strode. “ I call upon you, sir, to bear 
witness, whoever you may be, that I 
find this waistcoat and this pocket-book 
in the possession of this man, and that 
I take them from him after a struggle, 
in which he attempts my life.” 

“ Ay, ay, I know him well enough,” 
muttered the sailor : “ he’s a bad ’un ; 
and him and me have had a stand fur- 
ther, before this.” 

“ And I call upon you to bear witness 
that this man is the murderer of James 
Conyers I” 

“ What ?” roared Samuel Prodder; 
“ him I Why, the double-dyed villain, 
it was him that put it into my head that 
it was my sister Eliza’s chi — that it was 
Mrs. Mellish — ” 

“Yes, yes, I know. But we’ve got 
him now. Will you run to the house, 
and send some of the men to fetch a 
constable, while I stop here ?” 

Mr. Prodder assented willingly. He 
had assisted Talbot in the first instance 
without any idea of what the business 
was to lead to. Now he was quite as 
much excited as Mr. Bulstrode. He 
scrambled through the lattice, and ran 
off to the stables, guided by the lighted 
windows of the groom’s dormitories. 

Talbot waited very quietly while he 
was gone. He stood at a few paces 
from the Softy, watching Mr. Har- 
graves as he gnawed savagely at his 
bonds, in the hope, perhaps, of setting 
himself free. 

“ I shall be ready for you,” the young 
Cornishmaii said quietly, “whenever 
you’re ready for me.” 

A crowd of grooms and hangers-on 
came with lanterns before the constable 
could arrive ; and foremost amongst 
them came Mr. John Mellish, very 
noisy and very unintelligible. The 
door of the lodge was opened, and they 
all burst into the little chamber, where, 
heedless of grooms, gardeners, stable- 


AURORA FLOYD. 


270 

boys, hanpjers-on, and rabble, John 
Mellish fell on his friend’s breast and 
wept aloud. 

L’Envoi. 

What more have I to tell of this 
simple drama of domestic life ? The 
end has come. The element of tragedy 
which has been so intermingfed in the 
history of a homely Yorkshire squire 
and his wife is henceforth to be banished 
from the record of their lives. The 
dark story which began in Aurora 
Floyd’s folly, and culminated in the 
crime of a half-witted serving-man, has 
been told from the beginning to the 
end. It would be worse than useless 
to linger upon the description of a trial 
which took place at York at the 
Michaelmas Assizes. The evidence 
against Stephen Hargraves was con- 
clusive ; and the gallows outside York 
Castle ended the life of a man w'ho had 
never been either help or comfort to 
any one of his fellow’-creatures. There 
was an attempt made to set up a plea 
of irresponsibility upon the part of the 
Softy, and the sobriquet which had been 
given him was urged in his defense ; 
but a set of matter-of-fact jurymen, 
looking at the circumstances of • the 
murder, saw nothing in it but a most 
cold-blooded assassination, perpetrated 
by a wretch whose sole motive was 
gain, and the verdict W’hich found 
Stephen Hargrave guilty was tempered 
by no recommendation to mercy. The 
condemned murderer protested his in- 
nocence up to the night before his exe- 
cution, and upon that night made a 
full confession of his crime, as is gene- 
rally the custom of his kind. He 
related how he had followed James 
Conyers into the wood upon the night 
of his assignation with Aurora, and 
how he had watched and listened 
during the interview. He had shot the 
trainer in the back while Mr. Conyers 
sat by the winter’s edge looking over 
the notes in the pocket-book, and he 
had used a button oif his waistcoat 
instead of wadding, not finding any 
thing else suitable for the purpose. He 
had hidden the waistcoat and pocket- 
book in a rat-hole in the wainscot of 
the murdered man’s chamber, and, being 
dismissed from the lodge suddenly, had 

THE 


been compelled to leave his booty be- 
hind him, rather than excite suspicion. 
It was thus that he had returned upon 
the night on which Talbot found him, 
meaning to secure his prize and start 
for Liverpool at six o’clock the follow- 
ing morning. 

Aurora and her husband left Mellish 
Park immediately after the committal 
of the Softy to York prison. They went 
to the south of France, accompanied by 
Archibald Floyd, and once more traveled 
together through scenes which were over- 
shadowed by no sorrowful association. 
They lingered long at Nice ; and here 
Talbot and Lucy joined them, with an 
impedimental train of luggage and ser- 
vants, and a Normandy nurse with a 
blue-eyed girl-baby. It was at Nice 
that another baby was born, a black-eyed 
child — a boy, I believe — but wonderfully 
like that solemn-faced infant which Mrs. 
Alexander Floyd carried to the widowed 
banker two-and-twenty years before at 
Felden Woods. 

It is almost superogatory to say that 
Samuel Prodder, the sea-captain, w'as 
cordially received by hearty John Mellish 
and his wife. He is to be a welcome 
visitor at the Park whenever he pleases 
to come ; indeed, he is homeward bound 
from Barbadoes at this very time, his 
cabin-presses filled to overflowing with 
presents which he is carrying to Aurora, 
in the way of chilis preserved in vinegar, 
guava-jelly, the strongest Jamaica rum, 
and other trifles suitable for a lady’s 
acceptance. It may be some comfort 
to the gentlemen in Scotland Yard to 
know that John Mellish acted liberally 
to the detective, and gave him the full 
reward, although Talbot Bulstrode had 
been the captor of the Softy. 

So we leave Aurora, a little changed, 
a shade less defiantly bright, perhaps, 
but unspeakably beautiful and tender, 
bending over the cradle of her first-born ; 
and though there are alterations being 
made at Mellish, and loose-boxes for 
brood-mares building upon the site of 
the north lodge, and a subscription tan- 
gallop being laid across Harper’s ^Com- 
mon, I doubt if my heroine will care so 
much for horse-flesh, or take quite so 
keen an interest in weight-for-age races 
as compared to handicaps, as she has 
done in the days that are gone. 

1 END. 


GET UP YOUE CLUBS for 1863! 


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FETEESON’S HAGAZIRE 

THE BEST AND CHEAPEST IN THE WORLD! 

This popular Monthly contains moro for the money than any Magazine in the world. In 1863, it 
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lady ought to take “ Peterson.” It is 

THE ONLY MAGAZINE FOR THE TIMES! 

In its literature, “ Peterson” is conceded, by the newspaper Press, to excel all other Ladies’ magazines. 
Mrs. Ann S. Stephens, Mrs. M. A. Denison, Louise Chandler Moulton, Virginia F. Townsend, Carry 
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T. S. Arthur, Chas. J. Peter.son, and the Author of “The Murder in the Glen Ross,” besides all the 
best writers. In addition to the usual number of shorter stories, there will be givea, in 1863, 

Four Original and. Copyriglit Novelets, viz: 

THE BROKEN TROTH-PLIGHT, By Mrs. Ann S. Stephens. 

THE SECOND LIFE, By Author of “ The Murder in the Glen Ross.” 
THE PATIENT HEART, By Louise Chandler Moulton. 

COUNT TCHERKERNOZOFF, By Frank Lee Benedict. 


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SUPERB MEZZOTINTS AND OTHER STEEL ENGRAVINGS 

And those in other Magazines, and one at least is given in every number. 

COLORED FASHION PLATES IN ADVANCE! 

is the ONLY MAGAZINE whose Fashion Plates can be relied on.'^ 

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JLIST TTEW COOTC-SOOTC, 

The original Household receipts of “ Peterson” are quite famous. For 1863, receipts for every kind 
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PREMIUMS FOR GETTING UP CLUBS !— Three, Five, Eight or moro copies, make a Club. To 
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fifteen dollars, nn extra copy of the Magazine for 1863, W'ill be given. If preferred, however, we will 
send as a Premium, (instead of the extra copj\) an ILLUSTRATED LADY’S ALBU.M, handsomely 
bound in gilt, or our NEW M AGNIFICENT MEZZOTINT, for framing— size 27 inches by 20—“ BUNYAN 
PARTING FROM HIS BLIND CHILD, N JAIL,” a match picture to our former Freinium of “Runyan’s 
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copies of the Magazine will bo sent, or any two of the other premiums. Address, post-paid, 

CHARLES J. PETERSON, 

No. 300 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. 


Postmasters constituted Agents; but any jiersoil may get up a club. Specimens Sc-nt 
gratuitous!}', if written for. 



T.B. PETEBSOH & IBOTHEBS' PUBLIGAT[QNS. 


Booksellers, News Agents, Sutlers, and all others, will be supplied at very low rates* 


MAXWELL’S' WORKS. 

wild 8 port* of the West, 60 I Brian 0‘Lynn, - . 60 

Stories of Waterloo, - 50 1 

EMBROIDERY, ETIQUETTE, ETC. 

Miss Lambert’s Complete Guide to Needle work and 
Embroidery 113 Illustrations. Cloth, - - 1 50 

Lady’s Work Table Book, plates, cloth, crimson gilt, 1 OC 
Gentlemen’s Etiquette, ------ 3,; 

Ladies’ Etiquette, - -- -- -- 2- 

BY THE BEST AUTHORS/ 


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Twin Lieutenants, - 60 

Lady Maud, - - 75 

Banditti of Prairie, - 50 j 

Greatest Plague of Life, 50 
Tom Racquet, - 50 

Mysteries Three Cities 50 

Bed Indians of New- 
foundland, - - 50 

Salathiel, by Croly, - 60 

Aristocracy, - - 60 

Inquisition in Spain, 50 

Flirtations in America 50 

The Coquette, - 50 

Life in the South, - 50 

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W’hitehall, - 50 

Cabin and Parlor, - 50 

Romish Confessional, 50 

Miser’s li.eir, paper, - 50 

do. cloth, - 75 

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do. cloth, 75 

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Two Lovers, - - 50 

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Fortune Hunter, - 88 

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Gen. Scott’s Portrait, 1 00 
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the Coins in the 
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Violet, - - - 60 

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Complete Song Book, 13 
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Plantation Melodies, 13 

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Christy and White’s 
Complete Ethioinan 
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EXCELLENT 25 CENT BOOKS. 


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The Haunted House, 25 

Tom Tiddler’s Ground, 25 
Mystes-ious IVIarriaee, 25 
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Mysteries of a Convent 25 
Bell Brandorn, - 25 

Rose Warrington, - 25 

Robert Oaklands, - 25 

The Iron Cross, - 25 

Charles Ransford, - 25 

Sybil Grey, • - 25 

Female Life In N. York 25 
• Agnes Grey, - - 25 

Eva St. Clair, - 2.5 

Diary of a Physician - 25 

Emigrant Squire, - 25 

Monk, by Lewis, - 25 

Beautiful French Girl, 25 
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Nobleman’s Daughter, 25 
Ella Stratford, - 25 

Ghosfc Stories, - 25 

Abedi.ego, Mrs. Gore, 25 

Madison’s Exposition 
of Odd Fellowship, 25 

American Joe Miller, 25 

Abbey of Innlsmoyle 25 


Gllddon’s Ancle.nt 

Egypt, ‘ - 25 

Josephine, - - 2.5 

Philip Search of Wife, 25 
Webster and Ilayne’s 
Speeches in Reply 
to Col. Foote, - 25 

Father Tom and the 
Pope, - - 25 

Slave Smuggler, - 25 

Life in Syria, - - 25 

Mrs. Bradley’s Cook-B’k, 25 
Life of Pres’t Lincojn, 25 

“ Gen’l Scott, - 25 

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“ Sayres & Ileenan, 25 
Life Raft, - - - 2.5 

Ballet Girl, - - 25 

Ashlelgh, - - - 25 

Championship, - - 25 

Career of Champions, 25 

Southern Chivalry, - 25 

A Life’s Struggle, - 1 25 

Nothing to Say. - 50 

Train and Hughes, - 10 

Train on Slavery, - 10 

Game of Euchre, - 75 

Creation of Earth, - 1 25 

Rifle Shots, - - 25 


DICKENS’ AND OTHER BOOKS. 


Seven Poor Travelers, 13 
The Schoolboy, - - 13 

Lizzie Leigh, - - 13 

Christmas Carol, - 13 

The Chimes, - - 13 

Cricket sn the Hearth, 13 
Battle of Life, - - 13 

Haunted Man, - . 13 

Mother & Step Mother, 13 
Odd Fellowship Exposed, 13 
Mormonism Exposed, 13 


Duties of Woman, by 
Lucretia Mott, - 13 

The Holly-Tree Inn, - 13 

Life of John Mafflt, - 13 

Euchre and its Laws, 13 
Throne of Iniquity, - 13 

Dr. Berg on Jesuits, - 13 

Dr. Berg’s Answer to 
Archbishop Hughes, 13 
Sons of Malta Exposed, 13 
Magic Cards, - - 13 


WADS'WORTH’S SERMONS. 


America’s Mission, - 25 Thanksgiving; a Thanks- 

Thankfulness & Char- giving Sermon, - 15 

Bcter, - - . 25 Politic, lu e.. on, - 12 

Henry Ward Beecher or War and Emancipation, - 15 

*'*'• William T. Brantley’s Union Sermon, - - 16 


NEW YORK MERCURY STORIES. 

Each book contains Illustrative Engravings by Darley. 


Saul Sabberday, 

- 

2.5 

Sea Waif, - 

• 

25 

The White Wizard, 

- 

25 

The Man-o’-War’a-Man’s 
Grudge, • • - 

25 

Stella Delorme, - 

• 

2.-. 

Luoua Prescott, 

. 

25 

Our Mess, - 
Thayendanega, the 
Scourge, - 

• 

25 


25 

Elfrida, 

• 

25 

Pathaway, - 

- 

25 


The Rift and the 
Spray, - - - 25 

Morgan, - - - 25 

The Sword-Maker of 
the Santee, - - 2.5 

The Shell-Hunter, - «5 

Golden Feather, - 25 

Scotto, the Scout, - 25 

The Death Mystery, - 2.5 

The Owlet, - - 2.5 

Silver Star, - - 5Q 

Catholina, - - 25 


GOOD STANDARD BOOKS. 

Ernest Linwood, by Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz, cloth, 1 


Mabel Vaughan, one vol., cloth 
The Lamplighter, one vol., cloth, - - - - . 

Uncle Tom’s Cabin as It Is, cloth, " " “ i 

The Chronicles of the Bastile, cloth, - - - I 

Married Woman’s Private Medical Companion, one 
volume, clotk, - ------ 1 

Life of Garibaldi, with his Portrait. Price, - 
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every State in the Union. Price, . - - . 

Ethel ; or, The Double Error. Price, - ' ■ , 

Our Cousin Veronica. By Miss Wonnley. Price, 
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The Iniquities and Barbaraties at Rome in the 
Nineteenth Century. By Raffaelle Croisi, 

Medical Guide for Mothers in Accouchment, Suck- 
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Childbirth. Its i)ains greatly lessened, and its perils 
entirely obviated. One vol., cloth, - - - 

Peterson’s Complete Map of Europe, with extra 
Maps of Italy, Sardinia, and Austrian Eraplrv, 
bound in cloth, price, ------. 

The Ladies’ Guide; or, Skilful ITousewifc, - 
Exposition of the Knights of the Golden Circle, - 
Chemistry Made Easy, for the use of Farmers, - 
How to Preserve Your Sight. Bj' John 11. Curtis, 
How to keep from Colds, Cough and Consumption, 
Ladies Guide in Mantua-Maklng and Millinery, 
Violet ; a Story of New York Life, . - - 

The Orphan’s Trials. A Family History, - 
Woman and Her Diseases, the causes, symp- 
toms, etc., 

A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. By Mrs. Stowe, - 
The Diseases of Winter. By R. J. Culverwell, M.D , 
Red Sleeve, the Apache hief, or Adventures in 
Mexico, . - - 

Political Lyrics, New Ha'iVipshire and Nebraska, 


ro 

25 

25 

2.5 

00 

00 

OO 

2.5 

75 

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25 

25 

25 

50 


OO 

25 

25 

18 

12 

12 

12 

50 

50 

00 

50 

25 


12 


NEW BOOKS JUST PUBLISHED. 


Andree de Taverney. By Alexander Dumas. Being 


Prairie Flawer” 5® 

Aurora Floyd. By Mrs. M E. Braddon. A Domestic 

Story. From “ Temple Barr” 50 

The Dead Secret.” By Wilkie Collins, author of 

the ‘‘ Woman In White” 50 

Hide and Seek. By Wilkie Collins, author of the 

“ Dead Secret” ^ 

After Dark. By Wilkie Collins, author of “ Hide 

and Seek,” "Dead Secret” 50 

The Banditti of the Prairies; or, the Murderer’s Doom. 50 
Twin Lieutenants; or. Soldier’s Bride. By Alexan- 
der Dumas • 50 

Marrvingfor 5Ioney, by Mrs. Mackenzie Daniels, pri^ 60 
Archbishop Hughes on the “ War I” and George Fran- 
cis Train on “The Downfall of England,” price 10 

Love’s Labor Won, by Mrs. Southworth, cloth 1 50 

Do. " do., 2 vols., pap. 1 00 

The Flirt, by Mrs, Grey, cloth 75 

Do. do., paper 60 

A Life’s Secret, by Mrs. Henry Wood, cloth 75 

Do. do. paper 50 

The My-stery, do. cloth 75 

Do. do. paper 50 

The Channings, do. cloth 1 00 

Do. do. paper 75 

The Earl’s Heirs, do. cloth 75 

Do. do. paper 50 

Indian Scout, by Gustave Almard, paper 5» 

Do do cloth 75 

Flower of the Prairie, do paper 50 

Do do cloth 75 

Pirates of the Prairies do paper 50 

Do. do cloth 

The Trail Hunter, do paper 50 

Do do cloth 75 

For Better for Worse, paper 50 

The Stolon Mask. By Wilkie Collins, author of 

“ The Dead Secret” 25 

Sister Rose ; or, The Ominous Marriage. By Wilkie 

Collins 2.5 

The Yellow Mask. By Wilkie Collins, author of 

“ The Dea’d Secret’’ 25 

Train’s Union Speeches, First Series, one vol. octavo 25 
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The Two Pxlma Donnas, by Geo. Augustus Sala 25 


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.. 

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MRS. HENRY WOOD’S BOOKS. 

The Earl’s Heirs, - 50 I The Cnannlngs, • - 50 

The Mystery, - - 50 j A Life’s Secret, - 50 

Above are each in one volume, paper cover. Each one 
is also published in one volume, cloth, price 75 cents each. 

Verner's Pride, - - 75 I Aurora Floyd, - - 75 

The Kuna way Match, 75 j BetteT for Worse, » 75 

The above are each in one volume, paper cover. Each 
one is also published in one vol., cloth, price One Dollar. 


GUSTAVE AIMARD’S WORKS. 


The Prairie Flower, « 50 

The Indian Scout, - 50 

The Trail Hunter, - 50 


Pirates of the Prairies, 50 

Trapper’s Daughter, - 50 

The Tiger Slayer, • 50 


MRS. DANIELS’ GREAT BOOKS. 


Marrying for Money, 50 1 Kate Walslngham, - 50 

The Poor Cousin, > 50 | 


WILKIE COLLINS’ BEST WORKS. 


The Crossed Path, - 1 00 | The Dead Secret, - 1 00 


The above are each in two volumes, paper cover. Each 
one is also publislied in one volume, cloth, price $ 1 . 50 , 


Hide and Seek, . - 50 

After Dark, - - 50 

The Dead Secret, - 50 


The Stolen Mask, • 25 

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Sister Bose, • • 25 


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The'jealous Wife, - 50 1 The Wife’s Trials, - 50 

Confessions of a Pretty I Bival Beauties, - - 50 

Woman, - - - 50 | Bomance of the Harem 50 

The five above books are alsobonnd in one vol. for 52.59 
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cloth, price $ 1 . 50 . 


MRS. GEEY’S WOEES. 


Cousin Harry, - - 1 00 | The Little Beauty, - 1 00 

The above are each In two volumes, paper cover. 
Each book is also in one volume, cloth, price 51.50 each. 


The Flirt, - . - 50 

Oipsey’s Daughter, - 25 

Lena Cameron, • - 25 

Belle of the Family, - 25 

Sybil Leonard, - - 25 

Duke and Cousin, » 25 

The Little Wife, - 25 

Manoeuvring Mother, 25 


Baronet’s Daughter’s, 25 
Young Prima Donna, 25 

Old Dower House, - 25 

Hyaclnthe, - - - 25 

Alice Seymour, - - 25 

Mary Seaham, - - 50 

Passion and Principle, 50 


C. J. PETERSON’S WORKS. 

Old Stone Mansion, - 1 00 | Kate Aylesford,- - 1 00 
The above are each in two vols., paper cover. Each one 
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Cruising in Last War, 50 I Grace Dudley; or Ar- 
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I 


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The Watchman, - 1 00 
The Wanderer, - - 1 00 
The Lawyer’s Story 1 00 


Diary of an Old Doctor 1 00 
Sartaroe, - - - 1 00 

The Three Cousins, - 1 00 


Above are each in two vols., paper cover. Each one is 
also published In one vol. cloth, price 51.60 each. 


lANGOAGES WITHOUT MASTEE. 


French without Master, 25 
Spanish without a 
Master, - - 25 

Latin without a Master. 25 


German without a 
Master, - - 25 

Italian without a 
Master, • - 25 


The above live works on the French, German, Spanish, 
Latin and Italian Languages, without a Master, whereby 
any one or all of these Languages can be learned by any 
one without a Teacher, with the aid of this great book, 
by A. H. Monteith, Esq., is also published in finer style, 
complete in one large volume, bound, price, 51.50. 


BOOKS OF ADVENTURE. 


Valentine Vox, the 
Ventriloquist, - 50 

Sylvester Sound, the 
Somnambulist, • 50 

Life and Adventures 
of Paul Periwinkle, 50 
Adventures of Wilfred 
Montressor, 2 vols., 1 00 


Life and Adventures of 
Don Quixotte,2 vols: 1 00 
Adventures in Africa. 

Major Harris. 2 vols., 1 00 
Life and Adventures 
of Ned Lorn, 2 vols., 1 00 
Adventures of a Bone, 25 
’Wild Oats Sown Abro^ 25 


GOOD BOOKS FOR EVERYBODY. 


The Quaker Soldier, 1 00 
Afternoon of Unmar- 
ried Life, - - 1 00 

Life aud Beauties of 
Fanny Fern, - - 1 00 

Secession, Coercion, 
aud Civil War, - 1 00 

Memoirs of Vidocq, -100 
Yankee Stories,- - 1 00 


Currer Lyle, - - 1 00 

Wild Southern Scenes, 1 00 
High Life in New York, 1 00 
Piney Woods Tavern, 1 00 
Lola .Montez Life and 
Lectures, - - 1 00 

Sara Slick, the Clock- 
maker, - - - 1 00 

Humors Falconbridge, 1 00 


The above are each in two volumes, paper cover. Each 
one is als'o published in one volume, cloth, price 51 AO each. 


HUMOROUS AMERICAN WORKS. 

BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTBATED. 


Major Jones’ Courtship, 50 
Major Jones’ Travels, 50 
Simon Suggs’s Adven- 
tures and Travels, 50 
Major Jones’ Chronicles 
of Plneville, - - 50 

Polly Peablossom’i 
Wedding, - - 50 

Widow Bugby’s Hus- 
band, ... 50 

Big Bear of Arkansas, 50 

Western Scenes, or 
Life ou the Prairie, 50 

Streaks of Squatter 
Life, ... 50 

Pickings from Picayune, 50 
Stray Subjects, arrested 
and Bound Over, - 50 

Louisiana Swamp Doc- 
tor, - - - - 50 

Charcoal Sketches, - 50 

The Misfortunes of 
Peter Faber, - - 50 

Peter Ploddy, - - 50 

Yankee among the 
Mermaids, - - 50 

New Orleans Sketch 
Book, ... 50 


Drama in Pokervllle, 50 
The Quomdon Hounds, 50 
My Shooting Box, - 50 

Warwick Woodlands, 60 

The Deer Stalkers, - 50 

Adventures of Cap- 
tain Farrago, . . 50 

Major O’Began’s Ad- 
ventures, - . - 50 

Sol. Smith’s Theatri- 
cal Apprenticeship, 50 
Sol. Smith’s Theatri- 
cal Journey-Work,- 50 

The Quarter Bace in 
Kentucky, - - 50 

Life of Col. Vander- 
bomb, - - - 50 

Percival Mayberry’s Ad- 
ventures and Travels, 50 
Yankee Yarns and 
Yankee Letters, - 50 

The Arkansas Doctor, 50 

Battlehead’s Travels, 50 

American Joe Miller, 25 

Adventures and Love 
Scrapes of Fudge 
Fumble, - - - 50 

American Joe Miller, 25 


BOOKS OF FUN AND HUUOE. 


High Life in New York, 
by Jonathan Slick, 
cloth, - - - 1 50 

Judge Halliburton’s 
Yankee Stories, il- 
lustrated, cloth, - 150 
The Swamp Doctor’s 
Adventures in the 
South-West. 14 il- 
lustrations, cloth, - 1 50 
Major Thorpe’s Scenes 
in Arkansaw, 16 Il- 
lustrations, cloth, - 1 50 
The Big Bear’s Adven- 
tures and Travels. 

18 illus., cloth, -150 
Harry Coverdale’s 
Courtship, cloth, - 1 50 
American Joe Miller, 25 


Piney Woods Tavern, 
or, Sam Slick in 

Texas, cloth, - - 1 50 

Major Jones’s Court- 
ship and Travels, 
cloth, - - - 1 50 

Simon Suggs’ Adven- 
tures and Travels, 
cloth, - - - 1 50 

Major Jones’s Scenes 
in Georgia, cloth, - 1 50 
Sam Slick, the Clock- 
maker, cloth, - - 1 50 

The Humors of Falcon- 
bridge, cloth, - - 1 50 

Frank Forrester’s 
Sporting Scenes and 
Characters, 2 vols., 
cloth, - - - 3 00 


DOW’S PATENT SERMONS. 


Dow’s Patent Sermons, 

1st Series, 75c. cloth, 1 00 
Dow’s Patent Sermons, 

2d Series, 75c. cloth, 1 00 


Dow’s Patent Sermons, 

3d Series, 75c., cloth, 1 00 
Dow’s Patent Sermons, 

4th series, 75c., cloth, 1 00 


HENRY W. HERBERT’S BOOKS. 


My Shooting Box, - 50 [ Warwick Woodlands, 50 
Deer Stalker, - - 50 | Quorndon Hounds, - 50 

The Boman Traitor,! vol., cl. ,51.^0, or2vols., pap., j[l. 00. 

# 


ELLEN PICKERING’S WORKS 


Orphan Niece, - - 50 

The Grumbler, - - 60 

Ellen Wareham, - 38 

Who Shall be Heir? - 38 

Secret Foe, - - - 88 

Expectant, - - - 38 


Fright, ... 

38 

Quiet Husband, 

88 

Nan Darrell, 

38 

Prince and Pedlar, - 

88 

Merchant’s Daughter, 

38 

The Squire, 

88 


DR. ROLLICK’S WORKS. 


Dr. Hollick’s great work on Anatomy and Physi- 
ology of the Human Figure, with plates, - - 1 25 

Dr. Hollick’s Family Physician, - ... 25 

USEFUL BOOKS FOR EVERYBODY. 

Miss Leslie’s Behaviour Book, one vol., cloth, -150 
Creation of the Earth, - - - - - -150 

The Laws and Practice of the Game of Euchre, - 75 

Lardner’s One Thousand Ten Things Worth Knowing, 2.5 
The Anrerlcan Pocket Library of Useful Knowledge, 50 
Arthur’s Becelpts for Preserving Fruits, etc., - 12 

Kitchen Gardener, - 25 I Knowl son’s Horse Doctor, 25 
Complete Florist, • 25 | Knowlson’s Cow Doctor, 25 




Any of tbfe above works will be sent by Mail, free of Postage, to any part of the United 
States, on mailing price of ones wanted, in a letter, to T. B. Peterson & Brothers, Philada. 


0 


I^T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS’ PUBLICATIONS^ 


Booksellersi News Agents, Sutlers, and all others, will be supplied at very low rates. 


CAPT. MAERYATT’S WORKS. 


Jacob Faithful, - - 25 

Japhet Bearcli of Father, 25 


Phantom Ship, 
Mldihipraan Eai^, • 
Pacha of Many Tales, 
Naval Officer, - 
Snarleyow, - - - 


Newton Foster, - 
King's Own, 

Pirate & Three Cutters, 
Peter Simple, 

Perclval Keene, « - 

Poor Jack, - » - 

Sea King, . . • 


25 

25 

25 

50 

50 

50 

50 


Marryatt’s Works are also published in one very large 
octavo volume, bound in cloth or sheep;. Price 52.M. 


LIVES OF HIGHWAYMEN. 


Life of John A. Murrel, 25 
Life of Joseph T. Uare, 25 
Life of Monroe Edwards, 25 


Life of Helen Jewett, 

Life of Jack Rann, - 
Life of Jonathan Wild, 
Mvsteries of N. Orleans, 

The Robber's Wife, - 
Obi, or 8 Fingered Jack, 

Kit Clavton, - - - 
Lives of the Felons, • 

Tom Waters, - - 
Nat Blake, • 

Bill Horton, 

Qalioping Ous, • 

Ned Hastings, • • 

Biddy Woodhull, 

Eveleen Wilson, 

Diary of a Pawnbroker, 
Silver and Pewter, - 
Sweeney Todd, - 
Life of Henry Thomas, 
Dick Turpin, 

Desparadoes New World, 25 
Ninon De.L'Enclos, - 25 

Life of Arthur Spring, 25 
Life of Jack Ketch, • 25 


Life of Mother Brown* 
rigg. - . * 25 

Jonathan Wild's Life, 25 
IMck Parker, the Pirate, 25 
Life of Mary Bateman, 25 
Life of Captain Blood, 25 
Galloping Dick's Life, 25 
Life of Frank Smith, 25 
Life of Dick Patch, 


Life of Jack Bellingham, 25 


Life of Joe Blackburn, 
Life of Bill Cordcr, - 
Life of Bill Burke, > 
The Five Pirates, 

Jack Hallow^, • 

Life of Jack Bishop, - 
Life of James Cook, - 
Life of Jim Greenacre, 
Tom and Jim Berryman, 
Captain Blood and the 
Beagles, - - - 

Life of Grace O'Malley, 
Life of Jack Sheppard, 
Life of Davy Crockett, 
Life of Gay Fawkes, 
Roderick Random, • 


25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 


25 

88 

50 

50 

50 

50 


Memoirs of Vidocq, - 1 00 


MILITARY AND ARMY BOOKS. 


Ellsworth’s Zouave Drill, 25 I 
U.S. Light Infantry Drill, 25 | 
Government Infantry & 

Rifle Tactics, • • 25 1 


The Soldier's Companion, 25 


Volunteer’s Text Book, 
The Soldier's Guide, 


SEA TALES. 


Adventures Ben Brace, 50 
Jack Adams, Mutineer, 50 
Jack Ariel's Adventures, 50 
Petrel, or Life on Ocean, 50 
Cruisi^ in Last War, 50 
Percy Effingham, - 50 
Life of Tom Bowling, 50 

The Pirate’s Son, • 25 

The Doomed Ship, • 25 

The Three Pirates, - 25 

The Flying Dutchman, 


Life of Alexander Tardy, 25 


The Flying Yankee, - 
The Yankee Middy, - 
The Gold Seekers, 

The River Pirates, - 
The King’s Cruisers, 
Man-of-Wars-Man, - 
Dark Shades City Life, 
The Rats of the Seine, 
Yankees in Japan, • 
Red King, - . . 

Morgan, ^e Buccaneer, 


Jack Junk, • • • 

Davis, the Pirate, 
Valdek, the Pilate, • 
Gallant Toln, 

Yankee Jack, • 

Harry Helm, • 

Harrv Tempest,- - 

Red Wing, * - • 

Rebel and Rover, • 

Jacob Faithful, • • 

Phantom Ship, - * 

Midshipman Eesy. * 
Pacha of Many Tales, 
Naval Officer, - 
Snarleyow, - - « 

Newton Foster, « 
King's Own, 

Pirate A Three Cutters, 
Peter Simple, - 
Percival K^ecne, - 
Poor Jack, - - « 

Sea King, ... 
Cruising In Last War, 


GEOEGE SAKD’S WOEES. 


Consuelo, ... 
Countess of Rudolstsult, 
First and True Love, 


25 


The Corsair, 

Indiana, 2 vols., paper, 1 00 
or in I vol., cloth . 1 50 


HARRY COCKTON’S WORKS. 


Sylvester Sound, - - 
Valentine Vox, the 


50 


Ventriloquist, - 


50 


The Sisters, - 
The Steward, 
Percy Effingham, 


50 

50 

50 


AINSWORTH’S GREAT WORKS. 


Tower ot London, 2 vis. 1 00 
Miser’s Daughter, do. I 00 


Guy Fawkes, 

The Star Chamber, . 
Newgate Calendar, • 
Old St. Paul’s, - 
Mysteries of the Court 
of Queen Anne, 


50 


Mysteries Court Stuarts, 50 


Life of Jack Sheppard, 
Life of Davy Crockett, 
Windsor Castle, - 
Life of Henry Thomas, 
Dick Turpin, 


50 

50 

50 

25 

25 


Desperadoes New World, 25 


Ninon De L’Enclos, . 
Life of Arthur Spring, 
Life of Grace O’Malley, 


25 

25 

88 


EOGENE SUE'S WOEES. 


Wandering Jew, - 1 00 
Mysteries of Paris, . 1 00 
Martin, the Foundling, 1 00 
Above are each in 2 vols. 
First Love, • - . 25 


Woman’s Love, . - 

Man-of-War’s-Man, - 
Female Bluebeard, - 
The Adventures of 
Raoul De Surville, 


25 

25 

25 


25 


EEVOLUTIOKAEY TALES. 


Seven Bros, of Wyoming, 25 

_ T%_s j ^ or 


The Brigand, 

The Rebel Bride, •• 
Ralph Runnion, 

The Flying Artillerist, 
Old Put, ... 


Wan-nan-geg, - 
Legends of Mexico, - 
Grace Dudley ; or Ar. 

nold at Saratoga, - 
The Guerilla Chief, - 
The Quaker Soldier, - 


25 

25 


2.5 
50 
1 00 


EUEESOK BEENETT’S WOEES. 


The Border Rover, - 
Clara Moreland, 
Viola, . - . . 

Bride of Wilderness, 


1 00 
60 
50 
50 


Ellen Norbury, - 
Forged Will, - 
Kate Clarendon, 


50 

50 

50 


Above are each in paper cover. Finer editions of each 
are also published in one volume, cloth, price $1.50 each. 


Pioneer’s Daughter; - 
Heiress of Bcliefonte, 
and Walde-Warren, 


50 


50 


The Prairie Flower, ■ 
Leni-Leoti, 


25 

25 


T. S. ARTHUR’S WORKS. 


The Two Brides, 
Love in a Cottage, • 
Love in High Life, - 
Year after Marriage, - 
The Lady at Home, - 
Cecelia Howard, 
Orphan Children, > 
Debtor’s Daughter, - 
Mary Moreton, - 
The Divorced Wife, - 
Pride and Prudence, . 


Agnes, or the Possessed. 
Lucy Sandford, - 
The Banker’s Wife, • 
The Two Merchants, 
Insubordination, 

Trial and Triumph, - 
The Iron Buie, - 
Lizzie Glenn ; or. The 
Trials of a Seam- 
stress. Cloth, 

2 vols., paper, > 


25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 


1 50 
1 00 


SIR WALTER SCOTT’S NOVELS. 


Ivanhoe, - - - 

Bob Boy, - . - 

Guy Mannering,- 
The Antiquary, - 
Old Mortality, - 
Heart of Mid Lothian, 
Bride of Lammermoor, 
Waverly, - 
Kenilworth, 

The Pirate, - 
The Monastery, 

The Abbot, - 
The Fortunes of Nigel, 
Peveril of the Peak, - 
Quentin Durward, - 
Tales ot a Grandfather, 


88 

88 

88 

88 

88 

88 

38 

88 

88 

38 

38 

88 

88 

88 

88 

88 


St.Ronan’sWeU, - 38 

Red Gauntlet, - - 88 

The Betrothed, - - 88 

The Talisman, - • 38 

Woodstock, « - 8d 

Highland Widow, etc., 88 
The Fair Maid of Perth. 38 
Anne of Oelersteln, - 88 

Count Robert of Paris, 88 
The Black Dwarf ^and 
Legend of Montrose, 
CasUe Dangerous, and 
Surgeon’s Daughter, 
Moredun. A Tale of 
1210 , - - . - 
Life of Scott, cloth, - 


88 


88 


50 
1 50 


A complete set of the novels of Walter Scott will be sent 
to any one.to any place, free of postage, for Eight Dollars ( 
or another edition of Waverly Novels, in five volumes, 
bound in cloth, for 510.00; or the Complete Prose and 
Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, in ten volumes, cloth, 
for 520.00. 


GEORGE LIPPARD’S WORKS. 


Washington and his 
Generals, or Legends 
of Am’n Revolution, 1 00 


The Quaker City, - 1 00 
Paul Ardcnheim, - 1 00 
Blanche Brandywine, 1 00 

Above books are each in 2 vols., paper cover. 
Ladye of Albarone, - 75 I I.egends of Mexico, - 

The Nazarene, - • 50 | The Empire City, 


23 

50 


SMITH’S WORKS. 


Thomas Baiscombe ; or 
the Usurer’s Victim, 


I Adelaide Waldgrave, or 
50 1 Trials of a Oovemoss, 


50 


H’lSEAELI’S WOEES. 


Henrietta Temple, - 
Vivian Grey, - 
'Venetia, 


Young Duke, . . 

Miriam Alroy, • 

Contarina Fleming, • 


50 

50 

50 


FRANK FAIRLEGH’S WORKS. 

Frank Fairlegh, - - 75 I ForttinOs of Harry 

Lewis Arundel,- - 75 | Racket Scapegrace, 

Fine editions of above are issued in cloth, at 1 50 each. 
Harry Coverdale’s Court- I Lorrimet Littlegood, - 100 
ship, or cloth, 1 60 | or In cloth, - - 1 50 


50 


SUOLLETT’S GEEAT WOEES. 


Adventures of Pere- 
grine Pickle, 2 vols., I 00 
The Adventures of 
Humphrey Clinker, 50 


Roderick Random, - 
Adventures of Ferdi- 
nand Count Fathom, 
Sir Launcelot Greaves, 


50 


50 

25 


EEEET EIELSING’S WOEES. 


Tom Jones, 2 vols. - 1 00 I Joseph Andrews, 
Amelia, - • - - 50 | Jonathan Wild, • 


50 

25 


E. L. BULWEE’S NOVELS. 


The Rone, « 
Falkland, . 


The Oxonians, - 
Calderon, the Courtier, 


25 

13 


^ Any of the above Works will be sent by Mail, free of Postage, to any patt of the TJniteil 
h States, on mailing price of the ones wanted, in a letter, to T.B. Peterson A Brothers, Philada 

iAi 






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